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The best way to support The Storm’s mission of independent ski journalism is to subscribe to the newsletter, which will deliver future analysis, news, and podcasts directly to your inbox. Who Sam Weintraub, Founder and CEO of PeakRankings Date Recorded Oct. 5, 2026 About PeakRankings PeakRankings rates ski areas, plans trips, makes killer YouTube vids, and Instaposts and Facebooks (those are verbs, right?). Like me, they seem to have given up on TwiXXer. Please give them all the follows, but especially check out the trips page: Why I interviewed him Sunday evening, PeakRankings published an article headlined “Epic vs. Ikon: Which Pass Should You Buy Before Prices Go Up?” It’s an excellent breakdown of the two biggest ski passes by price, access, and region. I’ve known Sam for a while. He started PeakRankings around the time that I started The Storm. We both found momentum during Covid when everyone was at home making macaroni replicas of their cats and injecting themselves with bleach. Good times. But everyone was bored enough to pay attention to a couple of ski media startups. I don’t remember how we connected, but it turned out that Sam lived in the next neighborhood over, and one night we grabbed a few beers and talked skiing and ski media. Sam is younger than I am, and has been far more tuned-in and aggressive in his evolution from ski-ranking site to Insta/YouTube god (102k my dude!), to uniter-of-souls-via-ski-trip in our Age of Loneliness. He’s been generous with his time, insight, and advice, and we (my editor/wife and I), have learned a lot from Sam about deeking the algorithms. One thing I’m very deliberate about is not over-relying on one source. Everyone in skiing is busy all the time, and over-communication is fatiguing for me, for them, and for listeners and readers. But as soon as I read the pass article, I emailed Sam – who I’d seen several times already over the past few weeks – to see if he could jump on and help us break everything down. He could, and he crushed it. Resources Epic Pass prices are set to increase Oct. 7, and Ikon will go up Oct. 8. Those are both probably fake deadlines and you can usually get those same rates for at least a day afterward, but don’t assume that will be so. Anyway, here’s what the major passes cost now: You can view all the rosters here (scroll right to view). Here’s a nifty chart showing Epic and Ikon price changes over the years: If you want to view all the Big Dumb Charts I screenshared showing differences in pass partners by size and region, here they are. All of these charts are on a Big Dumb Google Sheet, otherwise known as The Encyclopedia Bro-Tannica, otherwise known as the U.S. American SnoSportSkiing Masterchart. Yes I know they look like s**t. Yes I know I need to migrate to something better. But what you see as you click through the tabs at the bottom is seven years of data entry fusing into something like an encyclopedia of American skiing. It’s just my worksheet, and I made it public because why the hell not? But like Joel from Open Snow said on my pod years ago, I move very slowly, but I’m always moving forward. Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the founder and CEO of PeakRankings. Sam Weintraub is my guest. Sam, welcome to the storm. I know you’re a few blocks away from me, but I don’t have a good in-person setup. How you doing today? 00:49:51.000 --> 00:50:07.000 Sam Weintraub: Good, thanks for having me, Stu. I know, we gotta figure it out, um, we’ll do maybe, like, a round 2 in the… I can just walk right over, um, I think it’s, like, 5 blocks away, it’s just up, um, Metropolitan Avenue, I don’t know if anyone. 00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:07.000 Stuart Winchester: Yah. 00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:08.000 Sam Weintraub: Oh. 00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:13.000 Sam Weintraub: watching or listening to this knows Brooklyn, but… 00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:26.000 Stuart Winchester: So, you put on… this was a last-minute thing, and I really appreciate you coming on last minute here, Sam. So, you wrote a great article yesterday. Well, I don’t know who wrote it. PeakRankings released an article yesterday. 00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:32.000 Stuart Winchester: called Epic vs. Icon, which pass should you buy before prices go up? So… 00:50:32.000 --> 00:50:49.000 Stuart Winchester: At a very high level, let’s just talk Epic versus Icon and the price dates and lay those out for everybody and, uh, and what, what your baseline thought is on each pass from an affordability, from an access standpoint. 00:50:51.000 --> 00:50:58.000 Sam Weintraub: Yeah, so, I mean, what’s really interesting is in the 2020s, Epic and Icon have… 00:50:58.000 --> 00:51:04.000 Sam Weintraub: really started to take different market positions. So… 00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:11.000 Sam Weintraub: If you look back at, like, 2019, 2020, they were around the same price. 00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:12.000 Sam Weintraub: But… 00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:19.000 Sam Weintraub: I think both of them were still trying to figure out where they were, because… 00:51:19.000 --> 00:51:33.000 Sam Weintraub: I believe, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, I believe it was 2018, the first year that you could buy both the Epic and the Icon Pass. The Icon Pass used to have a predecessor called the Max Pass, and… 00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:48.000 Sam Weintraub: it wasn’t really, um… I don’t remember the specifics of the Max Pass, but it wasn’t really as comprehensive as the Icon Pass is, in terms of destination offerings especially, um, that the Icon Pass is today. 00:51:48.000 --> 00:52:03.000 Sam Weintraub: And so, I think, long story short, what happened was it became clear that the Icon Pass just had much more of a destination, like, fly-to-destination roster, and that. 00:52:03.000 --> 00:52:07.000 Sam Weintraub: continued to increase over the… 00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:22.000 Sam Weintraub: course of the 2020s, um, you know, the Icon Pass started adding more and more destinations, and it just got to the place where now, if you go almost anywhere, um, with potentially the exception of Colorado. 00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:30.000 Sam Weintraub: Tahoe, and Whistler, um, the Icon Pass is just going to offer more compelling. 00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:48.000 Sam Weintraub: Ski resorts when it comes to things like terrain quality, when it comes to snow quality in a lot of cases, especially in Utah, because you get in on Icon, even if you’re thinking of Park City as its own destination, which it really does deserve to be in a lot of ways because it’s so big. 00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:57.000 Sam Weintraub: uh, it gets, like, half the snow of the Cottonwood Mountains that are just west of it. So, ultimately, what we’ve arrived at, and I think the market. 00:52:53.000 --> 00:52:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:52:57.000 --> 00:53:04.000 Sam Weintraub: I think, and I say I think because I know Icon doesn’t release its past numbers, but I believe what has happened is that. 00:53:04.000 --> 00:53:06.000 Sam Weintraub: Icon is just… 00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:16.000 Sam Weintraub: you know, become more of a premium in terms of its pass offerings. Um, and Epic, you know, I believe it was 2021, they… 00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:35.000 Sam Weintraub: decided to drop all their pass prices by 20%, and they never caught back up with Icon. So now they’re actually more of the value play. Um, and that’s also reflective in some of their packaging. So, if you look at the Epic Local Pass, which is the competitor to the Icon Base Pass. 00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:42.000 Sam Weintraub: those are, like, the products that come with holiday blackouts. So those are the ones, um, and I… 00:53:42.000 --> 00:53:44.000 Sam Weintraub: I think you probably have… 00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:50.000 Sam Weintraub: some of these sources as well, right, Stu? But I believe that, like, somewhere between 80… 00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:58.000 Sam Weintraub: to 85% of people who buy these passes get the base pass rather than the full. Um, is that correct? 00:53:57.000 --> 00:54:04.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s my general sense. You know, I’ve never been given an exact number, but yes, I’m hearing the same estimates. 00:54:03.000 --> 00:54:19.000 Sam Weintraub: Yeah, so with that being said, if you look at the Epic Local Pass versus the Icon Base Pass, the Epic Local Pass has a lot more leniency when it comes to those holiday blackouts. So if you look. 00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:28.000 Sam Weintraub: I believe at there are certain mountains in Colorado that are destination worthy. I believe Keystone. 00:54:28.000 --> 00:54:33.000 Sam Weintraub: I think Breckenridge, I would have to double check on that, Crested Butte, um… 00:54:33.000 --> 00:54:45.000 Sam

What Main stage today belongs to Kovach, who agreed to come on the podcast like 90 years ago and waited patiently for his turn. But just as I wrapped this pod, breaking news slammed my inbox: Alterra has selected their next CEO after dismissing Jared Smith in March. From the press release: Alterra Mountain Company … today announced that experienced hospitality and operations leader Kelly Vohs has been appointed Chief Executive Officer, effective October 19, 2026. Vohs brings nearly 30 years of experience leading customer-facing, operationally complex businesses across hospitality, real estate, and technology. Previously, Vohs spent more than a decade leading companies within Blackstone’s portfolio, including recently as CEO of LivCor. Most recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer of SafetyCulture, a global frontline operations platform used by more than 85,000 organizations and supporting more than 2.5 million frontline workers. Earlier in his career, Vohs led operations for BR Guest Hospitality, a New York restaurant group with more than 20 restaurants, and held leadership roles at several iconic hotels, including as General Manager of the Boca Raton Resort & Club and the Waldorf Astoria Chicago, and as opening General Manager of the Conrad Chicago. He also served eight years as a Green Beret with the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, Colorado Springs, completing four combat deployments. First - I am not sure whether Vohs is any relation to the Wisconsin Vohs, who have done such an excellent job building Cascade Mountain. I’m not sure if he skis or really knows anything about skiing other than that it requires snow and idiots to strap six-foot-long planks to their feet so they can slide down it. But I won’t dismiss him as a viable next leader for Alterra simply because his resume is not some jumble of Whistler-Intrawest-ASC-Sunday-River-Big-Bear. Plenty of individuals without ski industry backgrounds have successfully run U.S. ski areas - Win Smith at Sugarbush is one of the best examples. But I’m not sure if anyone with zero ski industry background has ever run such a large ski company. I give a bit more perspective in the pod, and I’ve already bothered Alterra for an interview. Stand by. Who Evan Kovach, General Manager of Mountain Creek, New Jersey Date Recorded October 5, 2026 About Mountain Creek Owned by: Snow Partners Year founded: 1965 Pass affiliations: * Snow Pass – 2 days, no blackouts * Snow Triple Play – up to 2 days, no blackouts Pay attention, because these passes have overlapping, but different, rosters: Base elevation: 448 feet (bottom of South Peak and Bear Peak quads) * Vernon Peak: 452 feet * Granite Peak: 605 feet * South/Bear Peaks: 448 feet Summit elevation: 1,458 feet (top of Sojourn double) * Vernon Peak: 1,403 feet * Granite Peak: 1,453 feet * South Peak: 1,444 feet * Bear Peak: 1,126 feet Vertical drop: 1,010 feet – top of Sojourn lift/Granite Peak to South/Bear base * Vernon Peak: 951 feet * Granite Peak: 853 feet * South Peak: 996 feet * Bear Peak: 678 feet Skiable acres: 167 Average annual snowfall: 65 inches Lift count: 9 (1 cabriolet, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets) Why I interviewed him I mean: I’m a bit obsessed with Mountain Creek, and it’s been a secondary subject on many past podcasts: For reference In 1998, Intrawest pulled off one of the most audacious single-season ski area transformations in American history, demolishing 15 double chairs and three surface lifts and replacing them with five modern machines. Check the before and after: Pretty amazing. It’s too bad Intrawest sold the place off in 2010. It stagnated for nearly a decade before onetime parking-lot attendant Joe Hession bought it in 2019. It’s been all rocketships since. I still, however, pine over this old early-Intrawest masterplan, showing additional trailpods and lifts between South and Granite peaks: Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom The Zoom transcript only contains my conversation with Evan Kovach. Please use the other transcript to read/skim my take on Alterra’s new CEO. Stuart Winchester: My guest today has been General Manager of Mountain Creek, New Jersey since 2020. Mountain Creek spans more than two miles along four peaks served by nine lifts. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Since 2019, Mountain Creek has been owned by Snow Partners, which also operates the nearby Big Snow American Dream indoor ski area, the beginner-focused train-based learning program, Snow Cloud Resort operating software, and the Snow Pass and Snow Triple Play. He has worked at or around the resort for nearly two decades. Evan Kovac is my guest. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Evan, welcome at last to the storm. I don’t know if I said your last name right, I’m sorry, but so good to finally track you down. How’s life in Jersey today? 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:51.000 Evan Kovach: It’s great. Thanks, Stuart. And actually, you did pronounce my last name correctly, which is very rare. So thank you for that. And thanks for having me. 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Look at that. So, I had the general manager of Mount Southington on the pod the other day, and I was calling it Mount Southington. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:04.000 Stuart Winchester: So I messed up the whole scary Mountain Creek, I think is an easy one. You know, Evan. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Folks are hard on Mountain Creek, uh, if they have skied at bigger ski areas, but I think the place is awesome. You know, it’s a thousand vertical feet with, with high speed lifts, an hour and 15 minutes from my house on a weekend morning with no traffic. So, uh, and, and I think. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:36.000 Stuart Winchester: You know, part of it’s, uh, and I’ll give you a chance to comment on this, but my perception is people think it’s kind of a wild place, uh, and sometimes dysfunctional, but I think under Snow Partners, they’ve really modernized, and at the core of that. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:40.000 Stuart Winchester: is snowmaking. So, what can you tell us about… 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:47.000 Stuart Winchester: how the snowmaking system has evolved since Snow Partners took over, basically, your tenure from 2020 to now? 00:04:47.000 --> 00:05:02.000 Evan Kovach: Yeah, absolutely. And snowmaking is something I’ve been passionate about since I was about 5 years old. So when I first started skiing, I would download ski resorts trail maps to Microsoft Paint and color in trails that I think they should be snowmaking on. 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:18.000 Evan Kovach: Um, so it’s something I’ve always kind of played with as a kid and now I get to do it, um, as a career. So that’s, that’s a pretty cool thing for me. But obviously, uh, two years ago we invested $5 million in automation, um, with TechnoAlpin. So that was, uh, 40 TT9s and TT10s. 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:28.000 Evan Kovach: Um, and that allowed us to get open our primary terrain on our primary peak, um, you know, much faster, and, um… 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Stuart Winchester: When you say primary, are you talking Vernon or South? 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:29.000 Evan Kovach: I… 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:45.000 Evan Kovach: Yes, Vernon Peak. So, upper horizon, lower horizon, the base area. Um, it allows us to open up our main base lodge to rentals and ski schools, so that’s really our core terrain. Um, a lot of our season pass holders, if they’re listening, they’re probably saying, what about south? 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:42.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:05:45.000 --> 00:06:02.000 Evan Kovach: And one of the intended consequences of automation there was we could focus our 60,000 CFMs of air over to South and Bear Peaks. That gets our train park open, you know, the primary place our season pass holders call home open, ski racing, all of those things. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:15.000 Evan Kovach: Um, it’s funny when you look at the whole puzzle, we were always so heavily focused on using so much air, and when we added in this automated system, we started drawing water at a rate that even exceeded what our calculation said. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:33.000 Evan Kovach: Um, and then, you know, fast forward the past couple of years in the New Jersey, New York area, we’ve had somewhat of a drought, um, until this summer. Um, so, you know, this past winter, we realized we really need to work on water management, um, not so much the core aspects of snowmaking, like buying more snow guns, or. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:50.000 Evan Kovach:

Who Dennis Eshbaugh, President and General Manager of Holiday Valley, New York This is Dennis’ second appearance on The Storm Skiing Podcast: Date Recorded Oct. 2, 2026 About Holiday Valley Owned by: Win-Sum Ski Corp, which Holiday Valley’s website describes as “a closely held corporation owned by a small number of stockholders.” Year founded: 1957 (opened Jan. 7, 1958) Pass affiliations: None! Base elevation: 1,514 feet (bottom of Snowpine Quad) Summit elevation: 2,324 feet (top of Tannenbaum) Vertical drop: 736 feet (skiing from the top of Tannenbaum to the bottom of Snowpine would be tricky but not impossible if a skier poached the summit-top walking trails and didn’t mind a little uphill; however, it would not be a great run; the most consistent quality vert would be lapping the Mardi Gras sixer, which is roughly 693 vertical feet.) Skiable acres: 290 trail acres, but 90 percent-ish of the trees are open enough to ski through (though the trailmap has few marked glades), when there’s sufficient natural snow. Which is often. Average annual snowfall: 180 inches Lift count: 13 (1 six-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 7 fixed-grip quads, 2 carpets) – Cindy’s fixed-grip quad chairlift scheduled for replacement with a high-speed quad ahead of winter 2027-28. Why I interviewed him We are in the midst of a Great Aerial Lift Reset in the United States. Halfway through this decade, U.S. ski areas have already built nearly the same number of new lifts as they did from 2010-2019: The last Great Aerial Lift Reset (GALR) came in the 1980s and ‘90s, when ski areas of means discarded not-terribly-old-fixed-grip-lifts and replaced them with detachables. The difference between GALR 1900s and GALR 2020s is that, in the previous era, most large ski areas were willing to sell their discarded lifts to small ski areas. Today, many hesitate. Holiday Valley does not hesitate. Since the 1990s, the busiest, most aggressively modern ski area in New York State has sold eight chairlifts to seven ski areas in six states. An eighth floated south until it ended up, improbably, in the Andes Mountains of Chile: Why does Holiday Valley do this? Operators who prefer to sell off the carriers as firepit accessories and scrap the rest often vaguely wave toward liability concerns. But I’m unaware of any injury lawsuit involving a relocated chairlift that blames the seller. Another common argument for scrapping older lifts is that detachable technologies are improving so rapidly that earlier generations of high-speed machines are too outmoded to bother moving. This is certainly true of most lifts built in the 1980s, but 1990s models have proven more durable – Boyne has relocated four within its system, and Holiday Valley’s 1996 Garaventa-CTEC detachable quad is now Corralco’s El Volcan Express. So when Holiday Valley announced recently that their next lift replacement would be a 2027 detachable quad to replace the 35-year-old Cindy’s fixed-grip quad, the question was not whether they would sell it, but to whom (Holiday Valley also occasionally moves lifts internally). And when Vail Resorts announced earlier this week that Park City would replace three 1990s chairlifts with two new machines, I thought it was fair to pressure the company to either re-use the lifts or offer them for sale. The three lifts in question are highlighted below. While they’re among the oldest machines on the mountain, they’re not old by U.S. chairlift standards. I’ve held off reaching out to Vail for comment, as I anticipate seeing reps from Park City at the annual Ski Utah media event next week in New York. Vail knows how to move lifts – Hunter moved the Broadway fixed quad over to the Hunter East beginner zone two years ago, and moved a then-19-year-old bubble detach quad across Okemo in 2021. The last aerial lift relocation from a Vail-owned mountain that I’m aware of is Heavenly’s Powderbowl Yan triple, retired in 2004 and moved to independent (and then-private) Echo Mountain, Colorado in 2005. If Vail decides to repurpose these Park City lifts elsewhere in their portfolio, fine. But if I see one more social media post humble-bragging about a $50,000 chair-sales donation from a lift worth 10 or 20 times that number, I think it’s fair to question whether the world’s largest ski company is putting its resources and scale to the highest and best use. Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today has been president of Holiday Valley New York since 1995, and general manager since 1989. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:37.000 Stuart Winchester: With 13 lifts serving nearly 300 acres of terrain on 750 vertical feet. Holiday Valley is one of the largest and busiest ski areas in New York State. It is also one of the snowiest, averaging 180 inches of lake effect snowfall. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:47.000 Stuart Winchester: per winter. He is also, like me, a proud brown dad. Dennis Eshbaugh joins me. Dennis, welcome back to the storm. How you doing today? 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: I’m doing great. Good morning, Stuart, and thanks for the introduction, and uh… yes, and congratulations on your daughter at Brown, that’s outstanding. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:06:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, she seems to be loving it there. She’s in her fourth or fifth week, and uh… just, what a cool town. I’d never been up there, and I just expected Providence to be another city, but it’s very leafy and fun and collegey. 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:15.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: I had the same experience in our first visit. I’d never been to Providence before Kate went there, and yeah, it’s a great, great town, and a great place for a great school. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and I didn’t realize this, but Brown is older than America. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:25.000 Stuart Winchester: So, it’s one of the… one of the few universities, yeah. All right, Dennis, we’re coming off a pretty… 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:21.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Yeah, hard to fathom, isn’t it? 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:38.000 Stuart Winchester: crummy winter in parts of the country, but it was pretty good in New York, and I… I didn’t ski Holiday Valley last year, but I did get out to Hollomont Buffalo Ski Center, had really good turns there. How was last winter for Holiday Valley? 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:54.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Well, the first thing I want to make an observation on is Jane pointed out that you were here in Western New York and didn’t ski with us. So you were duly noted, but the year was good. It was a touch late on the start. We opened a week later than anticipated. 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Sorry. 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Sorry. 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:09.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Snowfall was average, I think it was in the 186 range, but the consistency of the snow was outstanding. And so the snow year was good, the ski conditions were good, and it was a really solid winter. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I’m sorry I missed. If you want to feel even worse about that, where I blew past you to go ski is Ohio. 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:18.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Oh, my goodness! Hey! 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:21.000 Stuart Winchester: I went and skied all over Ohio and then hit Buffalo on the way back. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:20.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Oh. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Ohio’s important, it builds skiers. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:33.000 Stuart Winchester: It does, it does. And they’re all… four of the five are owned by Vail, and there’s one independent still, so it’s interesting to see all the contrasts. And I wrote that up a little while ago. So, so last time you were on the pod. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Dennis, and one thing I keep telling my listeners is, one thing I like about doing shorter pods is I can have folks like you on more often, because I talk to you all the time, and bother you all the time, and text you all the time, but I haven’t had you on the pod in 3 years, and you’re a great guest, so it’s great to get you back. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:08:04.000 Stuart Winchester: But you were… you were about… or you were starting the process, or you had just announced you were upgrading Mardi Gras to a six-pack, and that was gonna be the fourth generation for Mardi Gras, and that… that detached quad you were shipping down to Chile. So… 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:10.000 Stuart Winchester: just talk about that. The first six-pack at Holiday Valley, you know, three seasons in, how do you like it? 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:23.000 Dennis Eshbaugh: Well, I would say we love it. You know, it’s a great lift. It’s a Doppelmeyer and a great piece of machinery. O

Who Jay Dougherty, President and General Manager of Mount Southington, Connecticut Date Recorded Oct. 2, 2026 About Mount Southington Owned by: Multiple shareholders descended from the ski area’s founders Year founded: 1964 Pass affiliations: * Snow Pass – 2 days, no blackouts * Snow Triple Play – up to 2 days, no blackouts These two passes have a lot of overlap, but completely different rosters: Base elevation: 210 feet Summit elevation: 571 feet Vertical drop: 361 feet Skiable acres: 51 acres Average annual snowfall: 40 inches Lift count: 8 (1 triple, 3 doubles, 4 carpets) – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mount Southington’s lift fleet Why I interviewed him A lot of ski areas are beautiful because they’re set within nature’s masterpieces. Mount Southington is beautiful because it’s not: How cool is that? A ski area in the middle of a neighborhood. A neighborhood that most of us could probably afford to live in. Kids grow up across the street. If it snows enough, they can probably ski from their front door to the lifts. Good thing the ski hill is already there. We rarely build cool things next to where we actually live anymore. But it’s hard to get rid of a ski area once it’s built, unless it fails. Southington [Suh-thing-ton] is not going anywhere. Three of the bump’s chairlifts are under 20 years old (two are younger than five), and a replacement for the fourth - Stardust - starts, well, any second now (a new top terminal is sitting in the parking lot). A few dozen neighborhood ski areas like this still exist across America, mostly east of the Mississippi. Sometimes the neighbors hate them, especially during all-night snowmaking season. But very few people living in a house near a ski area today would have been surprised to find themselves living near a ski area, since the facility would have in most cases preceded them. Maybe a few even moved in to be close to skiing. It’s cool to imagine being one of them, waking up to morning turns three months per year. How cool - like having a lake house on a kinda small lake. It’s not Aspen, but most of us aren’t billionaires, and it’s nice to think that, in a few far-flung corners of America, there’s a backdoor to that sort of life that no one’s really checking. Additional resources * New England Ski History details Mount Southington’s early days. * A bit more on Southington’s Northstar lift, received second-hand from Craigmeur, New Jersey, migrating for its third life as Lost Valley, Maine’s Chair 3. * Somehow all my Mount Southington photos have vanished into the digital void, but Instapost preserves this shot of a really awesome sunset from my 2021 visit. Top of the Stardust chair: Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today has been president and general manager of Mount Southington, Connecticut since 2014. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Established in 1964, Mount Southington offers 51 acres of skiable terrain served by four chairlifts and several surface lifts. Jay Doherty is my guest. Jay, welcome to the storm. You are the first Connecticut representative to ever be on the podcast, not. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:36.000 Jay Dougherty: Okay. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:42.000 Stuart Winchester: for any reason other than I haven’t been able to figure out who to talk to, so thank you very much for coming on today. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:45.000 Jay Dougherty: Oh, absolutely. I’m excited to be here. Excited to join you. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:04:01.000 Stuart Winchester: And you’re a true Connecticut guy. We were chatting a little bit, and you said that Southington, and I don’t know if I’m even pronouncing that right, is in — OK, there we go. There we go. All right, see, this is why I need to get you on the pod, because otherwise I mess up simple things. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Jay Dougherty: It’s Southern Vin. Yeah, there you go. It’s all good. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.000 Jay Dougherty: Yeah, exactly. 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:06.000 Stuart Winchester: From right down the street, he said, tell us about Southington and what it means to you. Southington. 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:25.000 Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so I’m one of those fortunate few to get, have the opportunity to run the actual ski area that I grew up at. You know, I’ve had a season’s pass here since I was probably seven, eight years old. You know, and then I worked, this was my first job was in the rental department here. So it means a lot to me and about something that’s got a great community connection. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:26.000 Jay Dougherty: Oh. 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:37.000 Stuart Winchester: And did you… I noted that you’ve been general manager since 2014. That’s as far back as I could find your history online. Did you work there as a lifty in high school or anything? Was it your first job? 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:52.000 Jay Dougherty: I did, yeah, so it was my first job, I worked in the rental department as a technician, um, and then I was going to college for elementary ed, um, didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and my parents were like, well, I gotta do something. So I’m like, yeah, alright, you know, there’s a shortage of. 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:04:52.000 --> 00:05:09.000 Jay Dougherty: male, young elementary school teacher. So I’m like, that sounds like a great opportunity. But I was working here and got offered a year-round position painting lifts. And I fell in love with it at that point. And then I found a college program that was just starting out with Green Mountain College in connection with Killington. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:19.000 Jay Dougherty: Uh, and I ended up going there, and, you know, I graduated 2004, uh, worked for Killington for a very short while, and then came back here as Assistant Mountain Manager. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:34.000 Stuart Winchester: So talk to us a little bit about who owns Mount Southington. There’s a really good, you know, New England Ski History, this site does a great job with the origin stories and there’s a little bit on your site about the doctor and his wife, Dr. Harold Richmond and his wife who started it. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:27.000 Jay Dougherty: Yeah. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:34.000 Jay Dougherty: Oh. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:38.000 Stuart Winchester: I’m not sure who owns it now, but who do you report to? 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:48.000 Jay Dougherty: Uh, this is the best story, because it’s actually the kin of all the original owners. So all of their kids own it, and now we’re starting to see actual, like, fourth generation, like… 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, really? Oh, cool. 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:48.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow. 00:05:48.000 --> 00:06:05.000 Jay Dougherty: starting to enjoy the ski area. You see all the little kids and the nephews, cousins. So, uh, there’s actually probably about 25, um, actual owners, um, but we’re very organized down to, like, the board of directors that I answer to, that is comprised of those owners. 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:08.000 Stuart Winchester: So are they still mostly local folks then? 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:14.000 Jay Dougherty: No, not at all. Everybody’s spread out, uh, basically worldwide at this point. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:11.000 Stuart Winchester: All over. 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:20.000 Stuart Winchester: You know, I… maybe you’re not able to speak for them on this, but I’ll ask, because I’m seeing… 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:21.000 Jay Dougherty: Hmm? 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:24.000 Stuart Winchester: Family-owned ski areas all over the country. Go through a sort of, uh… 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:42.000 Stuart Winchester: ownership existential crisis where maybe the parents were really into it, or the grandparents, or even the grandkids, but then along comes a generation that maybe just doesn’t have an interest in running a ski area. You know, that’s how Vail ends up with a lot of its ski areas. They just, they were family owned, and they get. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:41.000 Jay Dougherty: Yep. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:57.000 Stuart Winchester: rolled over. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying that it’s a model that is uniquely challenged by, you know, generational transition. What’s your sense from

Who Doug Fish, founder of the Snowvana ski show and Indy Pass Date Recorded Sept. 30, 2026 About Snowvana Snowvana is a “winter kick-off festival” (a ski show) scheduled for a four-city 2026 tour: Use the code “thestorm26” to snatch a free ticket here for any 2026 Snowvana show. Check out the list of free and discounted lift tickets available onsite at each show. Why I interviewed him If we trust the metonymic origin story of our surnames, then Doug Fish is a descendant of “a catcher or seller of fish,” probably sometime before the invention of the printing press. I cannot think of anything that I understand less than fishing. Specifically, how a person can be good at it. My experience with fishing is that you cast a line in the water and nothing happens while you get drunk. But my buddy’s brother could go out on Sanford Lake in a rowboat and return an hour later surrounded by like 50 fish. Every damn time. And I was always just astonished like whatever inherent traits you need to be good at fishing that dude has them. I don’t know if Doug Fish is good at fishing, or if he even likes it. I do know that he’s good at skiing, and that he likes it. And whatever fishing ability he may or may not have inherited from Alabaster Fish of the 12th Century, he certainly possesses some of the traits of great fishermen: patience, instinct, and the ability to do hard things that no one else can figure out. Organizing and launching the Indy Pass is probably one of the great achievements of modern skiing, in that it proved that any ski area - and therefore nearly any skier - could join the multimountain pass club. While Indy wasn’t a novel or new concept, Fish was able to achieve the heretofore impossible task of organizing far-flung ski areas into a coalition with patience, persistence, and a low-key, no-pressure approach devoid of Big Ski’s ego. Once Fish sold Indy Pass, he tried something even harder: replicating the success of his Portland ski show across the country. To me, that sounds even more impossible than fishing, and does not include the benefit of a cooler MGDs on the boat floor. But whatever is inside of Fish that made the Indy Pass work, it’s making the recently faded ski show work too. I’ve attended Snowvana in Portland and Milwaukee, each time as a paid speaker. I’m scheduled to host live conversations with Indy Pass/Entabeni/Black Mountain owner Erik Mogensen (Friday, Nov. 6) and Killington owner Phill Gross and president Mike Solimano (Saturday, Nov. 7), at this year’s New England show. I don’t endorse Snowvana over any competing shows, but I do think ski shows in general offer a fun atmosphere, and a cool way to participate in skiing when you can’t actually go skiing. Background Fish has appeared on The Storm Skiing Podcast four times, each time solely as a representative of the Indy Pass: Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the founder of the Snowvana Winter Kickoff Festival and also founder of the Indie Pass. Now in its 10th year, Snowvana gathers skiers, ski area operators, and retailers in Portland, Oregon. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Seattle, New England, and Wisconsin. 00:16:46.000 --> 00:17:03.000 Stuart Winchester: The Indy Pass, which Fish founded in 2019 and sold in 2023, but is still involved in, delivers skiers two days each at more than 300 ski areas around the world for winter 2026 to 27. He is making his fifth appearance on the Storm Skiing Podcast. He is Doug Fish. Doug, welcome back. 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:06.000 Stuart Winchester: How’s it been? Been way too long. 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:10.000 Doug Fish: It has to. I know. I miss you. 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:21.000 Stuart Winchester: I know. Well, it’s been way too long on the pod, and I was just talking before this, in my little intro, before you joined, that this is one of the reasons I wanted to do a different format pod, because. 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000 Stuart Winchester: I talk or text you all the time. 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:25.000 Doug Fish: Yeah, yeah, no worries. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:39.000 Stuart Winchester: And I haven’t had you on the pod in 3 years. So, there’s no reason for that, because we love hearing from you, and your episodes always do really well. And we will be working together here a little bit on one of these Snovana appearances in a bit. We’ll get to that. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:42.000 Stuart Winchester: First, though, I do want to pick up… 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:40.000 Doug Fish: Yeah. 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:47.000 Stuart Winchester: where we left off in that pod three years ago. You had just sold IndiePass to Eric Mogensen. 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:47.000 Doug Fish: Mm-hmm. 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:48.000 Doug Fish: Get it. 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:56.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, who has gone on to since, also by Black Mountain, and runs a technology company. He was on the podcast recently, and has been a couple times. Just… 00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:56.000 Doug Fish: Yep. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:04.000 Stuart Winchester: First of all, tell us how you’re still involved, and give as candid of an assessment as you can of. 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:02.000 Doug Fish: Mm-hmm. 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:10.000 Stuart Winchester: where the Indy Pass is once you… once you let that baby go. 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.000 Doug Fish: Yeah. 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:22.000 Doug Fish: Well, it was a little difficult to let the baby go, but I felt at the time that it would be in good hands, and I’m happy to report that it is in good hands. 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:15.000 Stuart Winchester: No. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:27.000 Doug Fish: Um, you know, my country… my employment agreement ran out. 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:29.000 Doug Fish: Almost two years ago. 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:35.000 Doug Fish: And I’m still involved, you know. Eric and I extended it, and we keep extending it, and… 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:45.000 Doug Fish: I believe in in what he’s doing. I certainly believe in the past. I think that Eric has done a great job of. 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:50.000 Doug Fish: Staying true to the mission and the brand promise of IndyPass. 00:18:50.000 --> 00:19:00.000 Doug Fish: And, um, you know, as long as that continues, I will… I will be involved in some capacity. I’m kind of the Colonel Sanders of the IndyPass now. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:08.000 Doug Fish: I and you know I get to be a little a bit of an ambassador. I go to some of the trade shows. 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:10.000 Doug Fish: I ski with people. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.000 Doug Fish: It’s… it’s a pretty good gig, you know. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:15.000 Stuart Winchester: When you said Colonel Sanders, I mean, are you… 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.000 Stuart Winchester: What I thought you were doing is still… 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Recruiting new partners? Is that not the case? 00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:37.000 Doug Fish: Yeah, I’ve been. That’s what I’ve been primarily focused on recruiting and maintaining relationships, you know, and and helping grow from a hundred to 300 resorts in the last 3, 3 and a half years, which is pretty incredible growth. And. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:33.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:49.000 Doug Fish: you know, I can’t take all the credit, but, um, you know, when you can focus on just one thing, you can be a lot more effective, and I’ve been focused on that. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:20:04.000 Doug Fish: But Eric has assembled a great team, and I’ve kind of handed that that part of the the effort off to Nick Niebus and a couple other people on Eric’s team that are recruiting new resorts, and, as you can see from the latest release, that’s. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:06.000 Doug Fish: Going pretty well. 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:12.000 Doug Fish: Um, and I, you know, I think there’s some other exciting news in the, in the, uh… 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:21.000 Doug Fish: Uh, coming up in the future, I won’t spill the beans, but, um, you know, there’s always cool things happening there, and I’m just really thankful to be involved. 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:38.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s been really fascinating to watch the evolution of not just the Indy Pass, but the Pass landscape as a whole. And coincidentally, we started our brands in the same year. Obviously, you’ve been at this game for a long time, but the Indy Pass launched in 2019, and that’s when I came around. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:30.000 Doug Fish: Mmhm. 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:41.000 Stuart Winchester: observing the industry. 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:57.000 Stuart Winchester: the pass landscape for as long as you’ve been directly involved in it. And I think the way I always look at this, Doug, is Vail normalized the notion of a mu

It would not be difficult to locate a photo of The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast drinking canned Miller Lite shirtless in a lake while wearing a backward baseball cap. There is therefore nothing I can say here that can hurt anyone more than I’ve already hurt myself. Vail Resorts reported fourth-quarter and end-of-fiscal-2026 earnings yesterday. I’m no financial analyst, but the numbers are what I would call “not good”: [Epic] Pass product unit sales through September 18, 2026 for the upcoming 2026/2027 North American ski season decreased approximately 12%, days sold decreased approximately 10% and sales dollars, inclusive of sales and admissions taxes, decreased approximately 6%, as compared to the prior year period through September 19, 2025. Which, whatever - the only Epic Pass numbers that really matter are the ones that Vail Resorts reports in December, after the product goes off sale. Up until two years ago, annual sales ranged from “all right” to “pretty good” to “damn-I-guess-making-a-season-pass-cheaper-than-a-frozen-burrito-moves-passes.” Unit sales - meaning the number of Epic Pass “products” (we include Epic Day) sold - increased every year from the pass’ introduction in 2008-09 until 2024-25. Even then, unit sales only declined by two percent: Notably, Epic Pass sales dollars (right-hand column above), have never declined year-over-year. That could change this year. Vail executives seemed oddly fatalistic about declining Epic Pass numbers. CEO Rob Katz noted, during yesterday’s earnings call, that destination guests’ hesitation to buy (mostly, he implied) Epic Day Passes after last year’s crummy winter was an opportunity for Vail to “lean in to be more competitive on lift ticket pricing.” It’s all very disconcerting: after working for years to diminish the lift ticket as an Idiot Tax product-of-last-resort-that-will-either-force-you-to-buy-an-Epik-Pass-or-give-up-skiing-forever, Vail is betting on discounted lift tickets that sit well above peak rates from a decade ago to prop up financials as pass sales level off to yeah-2-million-passes-is-all-42-ski-areas-can-realistically-handle-anyway-Brah levels. Weird. Wonder what this guy thinks? McBrosephs I have takes. Just remember that when I go in on the Bros, it’s more self-reflective diary than attack on American culture. Though it’s also that. And when I go in on Vail, it’s acknowledging the good things they’ve done to democratize the season pass even as the company destroyed a perfectly good product that it now wants to summon as a savior. The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast will adopt one hamster for every new paid subscriber. Just kidding hamsters are weird I once watched one give birth and systematically devour her offspring. No thanks dude I’ll take the rats that live under my porch. What’s good, Fat Boy? Anyway if you like skiing subscribe to my newsletter because I like it too: Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast wants you to know that there is skiing in New Mexico. Even beyond Taos. Subscribe for constant journeys into such improbable ski realms: Who Jasen Bellomy, General Manager of Pajarito, New Mexico Date Recorded September 28, 2026 Also discussed Upgrades across Mountain Capital Partners’ portfolio (see chart below), and reader reaction to last week’s pods - especially the EuroSki ep with Iain Martin. About Pajarito Owned by: Mountain Capital Partners, since 2014; company also owns: Year founded: 1957 - predecessor ski area, Sawyers Hill, founded nearby by the same ski club in 1944 Pass affiliations: Power Pass, Power Pass Select, Power Pass Core - unlimited Base elevation: 9,000 feet Summit elevation: 10,440 feet Vertical drop: 1,440 feet Skiable acres: 280 trail acres + unspecified glade acreage (though Bellomy urges caution in the glades) Average annual snowfall: 125 inches Lift count: 6 (1 fixed quad, 1 triple, 3 doubles, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Pajarito’s lift fleet. Why I interviewed him “Ski New Mexico,” you say? Those three words underwhelm, but the stat sheet suggests that skiers miss out by dismissing New Mexico: Those are respectable vertical drops, and some nice acreage with modernizing lift fleets. Taos gets all the Ikon/Mountain Collective destination attention, and deserves it, after building seven new aerial lifts and otherwise sweeping the place clean over the past dozen years. But just about every New Mexico ski area is investing: Angel Fire props up the state’s first sixer for winter 2026-27, just a year after dropping a second quad, Rake’s Rider, onto its east side to spread skiers out between blues and blacks: Ski Santa Fe, Ski Apache, and Red River have collectively built or relocated another five lifts in the past decade. Tiny, super-south Cloudcroft seems like a mess, with little online presence and minimal operations (the bump lacks snowmaking). But overall, New Mexico is a bit of a big-mountain secret, with dry desert snow when it comes. The key to this improbable kingdom is base elevations among the highest in America: It’s not quite Colorado, but they’re high: And it’s high enough to get us to nine active New Mexico ski areas in 2026, which is probably nine more than most people think the state has. But even cloud addresses are not enough to keep these survivors around forever. They need snowmaking. Taos’ system - a big part of the mountain’s modernization under billionaire Louis Bacon, who bought the ski area in 2013 - runs to nearly 11,000 feet. But the smaller areas are building more firepower too. MCP, which operates one-third of those ski areas, stapled together a nice system at Sipapu, the company’s first acquisition, in 2000. Now, after years of negotiations, MCP is working with state and Los Alamos County officials on an $18 million snowmaking modernization plan for Pajarito: A five-mile pipe will shuttle water approximately 2,000 vertical feet up from Los Alamos to Pajarito’s summit reservoir. But this is not just a snowmaking project: firefighters will be able to tap hydrants along the five-mile route or dip the 10-million gallon reservoir with helicopters. The impact, MCP officials believe, will be substantial, and could mirror the turnaround of the company’s Arizona Snowbowl ski area. Prior to running a 15-mile-long snowmaking pipe 3,000 feet up from Flagstaff, Snowbowl’s seasons swung wildly, from 162,000 visits in winter 2000-01 to just four operating days the following season. Now, Snowbowl is consistently one of the last ski areas in the nation to close, with a 185-day 2024-25 season that ended on June 1. Repeating that success at Pajarito would, according to officials, give skiers seasons up to 140 days long - more than double the ski area’s traditional 60-day winter. So yeah, ski New Mexico, Man. It’s weird, I know. Down there in the desert. But there’s water if you get creative and work together. (Now we just need to see if MCP can repeat some version of this deal at snow-starved Sandia Peak.) Additional reading * A Ski profile of Pajarito by Nick Heil, 2016 * Pajarito’s blog tracking the snowmaking project Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. I only included my conversation with Jasen in this transcript - you can read my editorial on MCP or my reaction to reader’s comments in the other transcript, but frankly I’d either listen to them or skip those sections. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today has been the general manager of Powerito New Mexico since 2023. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Bajarito’s predecessor ski area, Sawyers Hill, was founded by top American scientists and soldiers working on top secret research, including the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos during World War II. 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:46.000 Stuart Winchester: In 1957, the Los Alamos Ski Club moved the facility up to Pareto, where today, 5 chairlifts serve 1,440 vertical feet on 280 skiable trail acres, plus glades. Pareto is one of 13 ski areas operated by Durango, Colorado-based Mountain Capital Partners. 00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:52.000 Stuart Winchester: and one of three that the company operates in New Mexico, including Sipapu and Sandia Peak. 00:35:52.000 --> 00:36:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Prior to joining the team at Power Reno, he worked at Saddleback, Maine, Sugarbush, Vermont, Pratchett, New Hampshire, and all the way back at the start of his career as a lifty at Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. He served a tour in the Marine Corps and spent several years working in air traffic management technologies. 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Jason Bellamy is my guest. Jason, welcome to The Storm. So good to have you. How is life in the mountains of New Mexico today? 00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:24.000 Jasen: Oh, man, thanks for having me. Super excited. Uh, busy. And wet, currently. 00:36:23.000 --> 00:36:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s… I’m out on the East Coast, it’s been raining all weekend, so… so I… look, I know you got a ton going on, so let’s jump right into it. The headline, if you go to Powerito’s website right now, which, by the way, if I’m saying the name of the scary wrong, you. 00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:48.000 Stuart Winchester: 2700% more water for snowmaking, so lay this out for us, Jason. What did Powerito’s snowmaking system look like before, and what are you… 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:50.000 Stuart Winchester: Building up. 00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:57.000 Jasen: So, historically, it was about 2010 that we were able to. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:04.000 Jasen: while it was still operated by the Los Alamos Ski Club, they put in a very bare-bones snowmaking system. 00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:10.000 Jasen: and captured surface runoff in the springtime to fill a 10 million gallon pond at the top of the mountain. 00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:11.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:17.000 Jasen: The runoff did not yield enough water to fill that pond. 00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:18.000 Jasen: So for… 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:35.000 Jasen: pretty near a decade, there’s been this effort to get a pipeline connecting the county to the Ski Hill for both wildfire suppression and firefighting capabilities, as well as solidifying the future for the Ski Hill. 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:43.000 Jasen: That pipeline is going to provide us with about, we’ll be able to cycle that pond about six times a winter. 00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:55.000 Jasen: Um, which, with 60 million gallons, we should be able to make about 300 acre-feet of snow. So, theoretically, when we’re done with this, we could cover the entire mountain with 12 inches of man-made snow. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:13.000 Stuart Winchester: So talk about, I guess, to start with, just that pipeline. I mean, there’s echoes here of Arizona Snowbowl, your sister mountain, which ran a pipeline all the way down to Flagstaff from its mountain. And from the press materials, it looks like this is being run up. 00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:20.000 Stuart Winchester: from Los Alamos. So how long is that pipeline? Where does it start? And what does the effort look like to put that in? 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:23.000 Jasen: Yeah, great question. Um… 00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:39.000 Jasen: The project started over half a decade ago, the real nuts and bolts of it. It’s a really complex project. It involves running that pipeline across DOE land, Llano property, Santa Fe National Forest. We had to get the county, the state, and the federal government. 00:38:39.000 --> 00:39:01.000 Jasen: behind it, and it’s amazing how everyone’s come together. So, after about five or six years of negotiating and all the legal work required, we were able to break ground. The pipeline’s about five miles long, and as a result of previous wildfires that have sparked up from the overhead power lines, we dec

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast thinks that yelling “PIZZA!” and “FRENCH FRY!” at a 2-year-old superman straightlining down a green slope is a highly effective ski instruction technique. If you agree, please sign up for my newsletter: Who Brian Bensch, founder of Snow Schoolers Date recorded September 24, 2026 About Snow Schoolers Snow Schoolers, per its website, is an “independent ski school program” that teaches lessons “at any mountain where we’ve established a revenue-sharing partnership with the ski area.” Skiers sign up for lessons on their Pet Rectangles, like this: Why I interviewed him That sounds pretty neat, right? Let me go see if Snow Schoolers teaches at my favorite mountain. Snow Schoolers probably does not teach at your favorite mountain. Unless your favorite mountain is 222-vertical-foot Granlibakken, which is about five feet away from 6,000-acre Palisades Tahoe, or 100 vertical-foot Frisco Adventure Park, tucked off highway 9, after 1.5 million-ish skiers exit I-70 on their way to nearby Breckenridge. That is not an indictment of small ski areas, which I love, or Snow Schoolers’ business model, which I also love. Rather, it’s my way of saying that the only way to sign up for ski school at Palisades Tahoe or Breckenridge is through Palisades Tahoe or Breckenridge. With the strange, grandfathered-in exception of the strange, cobbled-together ski bazaar that is Summit at Snoqualmie in Washington, all major American ski areas (so far as I know) operate with a monopoly over ski school operations on their property. In ways subtle and aggressive, they police and ban rogue instructors who would offer discounted lessons on resort property. There are probably ways to break this system, either through the courts or legislative amendment of the Forest Service leases that 125 U.S. ski areas operate on. Such change sounds radical only in an American context - most European ski areas already operate with multiple independent competing ski schools onsite. Over the past 20 years, technology has challenged monopolies across American commerce. Sports and concert tickets and taxi rides offer two prime examples of power shifting from one central operator to many operators, with benefits and drawbacks for the consumer. Perhaps we will get there with ski school. For now, I see a more practical path for an asset-light, app-based, independent ski school like Snow Schoolers - as the costs of labor, utilities, infrastructure, and insurance pile up, perhaps outsourcing the operation of a ski school is more practical for many smaller, independent ski areas than establishing and maintaining one of their own. That is what you get at Granlibakken and Frisco: Snow Schoolers pays the ski areas a share of each lesson, essentially as rent for the right to operate a ski school on their property. And Granlibakken and Friso don’t have to worry about hiring instructors and organizing lessons. There are probably 100 under-resourced ski areas in America where this model could work tomorrow. Brian and I discuss why Snow Schoolers works where it does, and why the model has been slow to spread. Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today founded Snowschoolers in 2014 with the mission to make skiing and riding affordable and accessible for average Americans. 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:11.000 Stuart Winchester: and to pay snow sports pros a sustainable living wage. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Today, Snowschoolers operates at Grand Lebakken in Lake Tahoe, and Frisco Adventure Park in Colorado, two small ski areas. 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Last year, Snow Schoolers hosted approximately 6,000 students. He is a good friend of the Storm. He is Brian Bench. Brian, welcome to the Storm. You reached out to me very shortly after I launched in 2019 or 20, and we’ve been talking for years, and you’ve helped me out a lot. 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.000 Stuart Winchester: With the… 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:45.000 Stuart Winchester: digital side of things, which I’m not so good at, so it’s awesome to finally get you on and talk some snow schoolers. How you doing today? 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:48.000 Brian Bensch: Doing lovely. Can’t complain. Always busy, never bored. 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:52.000 Stuart Winchester: And that is… yeah, that is a picture out your window of Tahoe, right? 00:16:51.000 --> 00:17:00.000 Brian Bensch: Yes, that is a, it’s called Maggie’s Peak, but that’s looking at the little lake just next to Emerald Bay. 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:05.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, which would be sort of north side of the lake, so you’d be looking… 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:03.000 Brian Bensch: Oh. 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:08.000 Brian Bensch: South Tahoe, kind of on the other side of the corner, like, across from Heavenly. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, south, right? I was… I was backwards. So… so on the… up the left side, there would be Homewood, and then up the right side would be Heavenly and Diamond Peak, and at the top is, like. 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:10.000 Brian Bensch: Yeah. 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:15.000 Brian Bensch: Correct. 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:19.000 Brian Bensch: Mostly correct. 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Or North Star? North Star, Northwood. Okay, alright, uh, before I hurt myself, let’s just get into this. So, so Brian. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:28.000 Brian Bensch: Well, we’ll get you out to Tahoe soon enough, and then your Tahoe geography will get. 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:31.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s been a minute. So… 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:40.000 Stuart Winchester: What is broken about American ski schools, and how did you try to fix it with snow schoolers? 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:45.000 Brian Bensch: Yeah. So I would say similar to, you know. 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.000 Brian Bensch: The the general diatribe about, you know. 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:55.000 Brian Bensch: The ski industry being kind of broken with lift tickets too expensive and climate change is gonna end the world. 00:17:55.000 --> 00:18:07.000 Brian Bensch: Not everything is broken, but particularly the most front and center in your face resorts that you know everyone hears about, and you know, makes the quote unquote mainstream news has been broken for a while. 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:15.000 Brian Bensch: And, you know, the gist is, if you roll up to, you know, a Tier 1 destination resort. 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:16.000 Brian Bensch: Brooke, uh… 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:32.000 Brian Bensch: Not only is lift ticket price what it is, but if you are looking for a group lesson, you’re looking at a couple 100 bucks. And if you’re looking for a private lesson, you’re lucky if you can find anything that is under 1000 today. When we started Snow Schoolers, I remember telling people like, you know, a private lesson is $700 or $800. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:35.000 Brian Bensch: Well, now it’s roughly double that. 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:51.000 Brian Bensch: And I started teaching skiing back in college at the Dartmouth Skiway shout out to Mark and the team there, and you know I thought it was the best job ever making 12 bucks an hour in college, but it is still a minimum wage hourly job. 00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:55.000 Brian Bensch: Despite the high margins that resorts take. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, wait, wait, let’s, let’s pause right there. So over a thousand a day for a lesson. 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:07.000 Stuart Winchester: patrollers are making… I think at the Tier 1 resorts, they’re probably making more than minimum wage. I think it’s probably more in… at least in the 20s. 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:10.000 Brian Bensch: Yeah, the, the, go ahead. 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Plus tips, but, but. 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Still, right, so you figure it’s $1,200 a day for a lesson, and the instructor’s getting, you know, $150 of that, or something. What… why… 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Why does that model even exist? Like, who would even do that? 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:25.000 Brian Bensch: Out. 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:28.000 Brian Bensch: Because… 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Like, who would work for that? Like, when you, right? Like, why not just give your own lessons? 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:29.000 Brian Bensch: Yeah. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:44.000 Brian Bensch: Yeah, well, and there’s two sides… two sides of the mark, and I, uh… outside of my passions for skiing, I consider myself sort of a marketplace, you know, guru of sorts. And, you know, on the supply side, or, like, the staffing side. 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:33.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:52.000

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is flabbergasted by EuroSki. Donate to my brain transplant fund to make me more smarter: Who Iain Martin, founder and host of UK-based The Ski Podcast. YouTube here. This is Iain’s second appearance on The Storm: Interview date September 24, 2026 Why I interviewed him If, like me, you’re a U.S. American SnoSportSkier, you may find European skiing more than a little baffling. More than 4,000 ski areas spread over dozens of countries with their dozens of languages. Trams and gondolas pop skyward from every other corner in Switzerland or the Pyrenees or Slovenia, as numerous as the strip-mall vape shops and Jesus-Knows-You’re-Watching-Porn billboards defecating all over America’s roads. The trail markings in Europe are all different colors. Why is no one skiing off the groomers? Who stole all the trees? Why is every ski lift either a tram that looks CGI’d to transport Storm Troopers to a fictional Star Wars Cloud City or a T-bar that looks as though it was hammered together by Yohan in between sheep shearings? Why is the food good and the alcohol cheap? Why do lift tickets not cost more than a semester’s tuition at Cornell? And, most baffling of all as we contemplate the growing presence of EuroSki on U.S.-based multimountain passes, why is every ski resort actually 10 or 15 or 100 different ski areas stapled together as the Valley of Grand Domaine de Les Skis? I wish I could be more helpful in answering these questions. So far, I have not been very helpful. I felt like I could get away with just pointing and laughing as Vail and Alterra added a handful of big-time European ski resorts to their rosters, but the numbers have rapidly spiraled: check out the number of Euro ski areas that have joined Epic, Ikon, and Indy since 2018: At first I tried to keep up, but I just sort of surrendered after 2025. I did manage write-ups of Epic Pass additions in Austria, and new Ikon partners in Italy and France, but I never got past more than cursory acknowledgements of Indy’s massive haul of Euro partners from Turkey up through the Alps core to Scotland. And I thought, “OK how many gigantic resorts can they have over there it’s gotta stop soon right?” But they just kept coming like kaijū in Pacific Rim. The pass-by-pass totals headed into winter 2026-27 are shocking: Here’s a country-by-country breakdown that’s a bit easier to read: And here’s the detailed roster - not all the lifts are filled in because shoot me: This chart is the European equivalent of American college football rankings. It makes no sense, but it must be fun because so many people do it, right? I tried to make a map but it sorta sucks so I’m going to keep trying. I did use the map as a visual aide in the podcast, which is also and always available in audio-only. But if you want to watch above or on YouTube, our conversation will make marginally more sense as I scroll around beneath Iain’s narrative. Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Zoom Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the founder and host of The Ski Podcast, a UK-based show that just published its 327th episode. 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:56.000 Stuart Winchester: He’s also a freelance journalist writing for national and specialized press and the owner of a digital marketing consultancy for snow sports. Ian Martin is my guest. He is a good friend of the storm. He has been on the show before and he is here today to help us make sense of Europe. Ian, how you doing today? 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:02.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: I am really well, Stuart. It’s really nice to see you, and thank you for inviting me onto the show. 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:07.000 Stuart Winchester: Before we get started, what do you got lined up for this winter? When do you start skiing? 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:23.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: My personal first trip will be out to Les Des Alpes ski resort in France, which I’ll be doing in early December. But I will actually be skiing not next weekend, but the one after in one of our indoor snow slopes. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:24.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:28.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: in the UK. I’ll be skiing in the snowy center, Manchester, so I’ll get to get my skis on. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:28.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, cool. 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, that’ll be a lot of fun. Yeah, we have the one right over in New Jersey. I was supposed to go a couple of… a couple weeks ago, but I… something came up, and I wasn’t able to make it. Alright, so Ian, let me set this up for the listeners. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.000 Stuart Winchester: And, and… 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:54.000 Stuart Winchester: as a baseline for what we’re dealing with here. So, US-based passes, meaning Epic, Icon, and Indy. There’s also one on Mountain Collective, but it overlaps with… there’s two on Mountain Collective that overlap with Icon, so I’. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000 Stuart Winchester: So they have added a total of 61 destinations. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:00.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: Mm-hmm. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 Stuart Winchester: in 14 European countries. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:04.000 Stuart Winchester: 13 of those are on Epic. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Nine are on icon. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:18.000 Stuart Winchester: 39 are on Indy. Uh, so… some of those are unlimited on Epic, some you get 5 days, some you get 7. Icon’s a pretty standard 7 days, or 5 days, even with the base pass. Indy is 2 days at each. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:22.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, 20 of those destinations are in Austria. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:31.000 Stuart Winchester: 12 are in Switzerland. Uh, 8 are in France, and they’re all over the place, but those are the countries with the most. So let me… I wanna actually… 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:33.000 Stuart Winchester: Share on my screen. 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:38.000 Stuart Winchester: a map that I made that could help us as a little guide, although it’s not a… 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:42.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s not a great map, but I will… 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay. Can you, can you see the map? 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:51.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: I… can see the map, yes. 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:52.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, yeah, I couldn’t figure out how to make the… 00:09:52.000 --> 00:10:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, let me just explain this at a high level. So, I couldn’t figure out how to make the text smaller, it’s very much a work in progress, but, uh, blue is, uh, the names of the ski areas are by country. 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:19.000 Stuart Winchester: And the names of the icons are bypassed. So when you zoom down to Austria, it’s Epic, Epic, Indy. Uh, Indy’s red, Icon’s yellow, uh, Epic is blue. This is one where it really helps to watch the video. If not, we’ll explain it, and you don’t have to. 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:34.000 Stuart Winchester: be watching to understand everything. So, uh, looking at this, Ian, and putting aside my, uh, crappy map design skills, and looking at the full of Europe, from above, from space, as we can do in the future here, uh, where do you even start? 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:53.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: Well, firstly, I’ve got to congratulate you on your data. It’s just amazing. When you read out all of the different resorts, and the number of countries, and the number of resorts in each country, I’ve got one of your spreadsheets printed out here, and it’s already changed since then. So, staying up to date the whole time is really quite incredible. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:11:06.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: how you manage… how you manage to do that. Um, it is, uh, amazing. In… in respect of the map, there’s obviously a lot of ski areas on there, and probably this is going to be better for someone as a research tool. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:15.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: Now, you mentioned that there are 61 countries in total, 61 ski areas in total that are covered on those different passes. 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:18.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: And I was thinking about… 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:34.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: what is the best way to kind of go into getting a sense for maybe which ones you should visit? Obviously, it’s going to be different for everybody, depending on what kind of pass they have, and I know some people have more than one pass, but I thought that maybe a useful way to do it might be to think of. 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:37.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: Let’s say the hero trip. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:41.000 Iain - The Ski Podcast: Then maybe somewhere you might go. 00:11:41.

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Stuff referenced in podcast: * The Salt Lake Tribune profiles Clint Richins of Logan, who wants the State of Utah to open a ski area where “he can take his family skiing without breaking the bank.” Clint, you have an open invitation if you want to come on the pod. * Vail Resorts acknowledges Oasis Management’s nomination of four new board members. * Lift Blog reported Friday that Giants Ridge, Minnesota is seeking a new operator - and I have one in mind. The ski area also updated its master development plan. * Plus listener reaction to several of last week’s posts: Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. About Bear Den Transcripts There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them. Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. This is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment. Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio. Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the CEO of Bear Den Partners, which operates four New England ski areas. His family has operated 1,180 vertical-foot Berkshire East, Massachusetts since 1976, and acquired 1,000 vertical-foot Catamount on the New York-Massachusetts border in 2018. 01:14:24.000 --> 01:14:53.000 Stuart Winchester: In 2025, the family teamed up with a local group to acquire 2,057 vertical foot Burke Mountain out of receivership. And earlier this year, Bairdan purchased a majority stake in Smuggler’s Notch, which with 2,610 vertical feet, 1,060 acres across three mountains, and 322 inches of average annual snowfall, is one of the largest, snowiest, and most fun ski areas in eastern North America. John Schaefer is my guest. John is a very good friend of the storm, and I welcome him back. 01:14:53.000 --> 01:14:56.000 Stuart Winchester: How is life leading up to ski season, John? 01:14:56.000 --> 01:14:58.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Oh, is what? 01:14:57.000 --> 01:14:59.000 Stuart Winchester: How is life? 01:14:58.000 --> 01:15:01.000 Jonathan Schaefer: How is life? It’s good. 01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, what delayed you today? 01:15:01.000 --> 01:15:03.000 Jonathan Schaefer: I’m, uh… 01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:14.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Uh, a skunk. So I’m a little tired. I have some Diet Pepsi here to kickstart the day, but my dog got a skunk, uh, first thing, which is great. 01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:05.000 Stuart Winchester: Good. 01:15:05.000 --> 01:15:07.000 Stuart Winchester: Let’s go. 01:15:08.000 --> 01:15:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Thank you. 01:15:14.000 --> 01:15:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Massachusetts. 01:15:14.000 --> 01:15:19.000 Jonathan Schaefer: And it was better once I opened the door and it all came wafting into the house. 01:15:18.000 --> 01:15:28.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, God, Berkshire’s living. All right, well, I appreciate you fighting through that and joining us here, John. So, let’s talk smugs, first of all, because. 01:15:28.000 --> 01:15:44.000 Stuart Winchester: You know, Bill Stritzler, I have a ton of respect for what he did at Smuggler’s Notch, and how he’s maintained the atmosphere, and it’s consistently voted one of skier… by skiers as one of their favorite mountains, one of the best family mountains. It’s also just a badass expert mountain. 01:15:44.000 --> 01:15:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, the… the… 01:15:46.000 --> 01:15:48.000 Stuart Winchester: the… 01:15:48.000 --> 01:16:04.000 Stuart Winchester: issue that comes up over and over again is, of course, the chairlifts. There are 7 haul lifts. They are a combined 392 years old. Uh, they are a combined 29,439 feet long. That’s 5.58 miles. Uh, Madonna is the oldest. 01:16:04.000 --> 01:16:21.000 Stuart Winchester: 6,719-foot-long 1963 haul, it got a new top terminal in 2002, which I believe is the drive terminal. Sterling is the next longest, it’s a 1964 haul, and the Village Lift is the next longest at 5,155 feet, that’s 1967, so… 01:16:21.000 --> 01:16:28.000 Stuart Winchester: those are sort of the three main lifts, and then there’s some other little lifts, Madonna 2 and a T-bar and such, but… but John… 01:16:28.000 --> 01:16:39.000 Stuart Winchester: I think everyone wants to know, what are you gonna do about the Lyft fleet at Smug’s, because you have a contingent that loves the old Lyfts and doesn’t want you to, but you have another contingent that’s like… 01:16:39.000 --> 01:16:44.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s why I don’t go there. So what do you have in mind? What can you tell us? 01:16:43.000 --> 01:16:59.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Well, I mean, it’s a problem that’s highlighted by all the fun facts you just gave us here. And give you credit for that, going back to the announcement letter and post that you did. 01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:01.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Um… 01:17:01.000 --> 01:17:12.000 Jonathan Schaefer: It’s the balance between preservation and conservation, right? I mean, it’s an environmental argument, it’s a scary management argument, it’s… do you preserve it, and do you keep it just exactly like it is? 01:17:04.000 --> 01:17:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 01:17:12.000 --> 01:17:24.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Or do you conserve an asset on into the future? And that’s a fancy way of saying that, nice try, you’re not going to quite get the answer today. 01:17:24.000 --> 01:17:27.000 Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, we have to have some reality here, right? Which is… 01:17:28.000 --> 01:17:31.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Those lifts are in excellent shape. 01:17:32.000 --> 01:17:40.000 Jonathan Schaefer: maintenance going on through the years and decades will become harder and harder and harder. And we’re gonna have to address the problems. 01:17:40.000 --> 01:17:43.000 Jonathan Schaefer: before they become problems. So. 01:17:43.000 --> 01:17:45.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Eyes wide open. 01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:50.000 Jonathan Schaefer: We are looking at everything at Smuggler’s Notch, including the lift system. 01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:55.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Also, in perfect honesty, there isn’t just. 01:17:55.000 --> 01:18:00.000 Jonathan Schaefer: a single plan that’s gonna work there. You know, there’s not. 01:18:01.000 --> 01:18:08.000 Jonathan Schaefer: you know, there’s not an endless pool of capital to go through and replace. How many? How many lineal feet of lift is that. 01:18:07.000 --> 01:18:10.000 Stuart Winchester: 29,439. 01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:14.000 Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, that’s just under six miles of lift line. 01:18:13.000 --> 01:18:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 01:18:14.000 --> 01:18:18.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, that’s a lot right? And it’s a pretty big, angry mountain. 01:18:16.000 --> 01:18:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:23.000 Jonathan Schaefer: So when you look at that hillside and you contemplate driving. 01:18:23.000 --> 01:18:25.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Concrete up to the top, or… 01:18:25.000 --> 01:18:29.000 Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, you’re flying helicopters in, and it’s a massive project. 01:18:29.000 --> 01:18:30.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 01:18:29.000 --> 01:18:32.000 Jonathan Schaefer: So, we have to just do… 01:18:32.000 --> 01:18:48.000 Jonathan Schaefer: the right amount of work to keep that mountain, you know, going and thriving into the future. But also, you know, to your point, you know, people love it. You know, people love these mountains. They love them to death sometimes. We don’t want that to happen. 01:18:49.000 --> 01:19:00.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Um, but we respect everybody’s point of view and we’re just gonna have to work with our community to, to sort of telegraph those changes when they come up. And right now there’s, uh, there’s no major changes. You know, I don’t have a. 01:19:00.000 --> 01:19:12.000 Jonathan Schaefer: an SE group plan that I can peel off the desk here and lay it out in front of you and show you exactly what’s going on. I think that we’ve been around long enough that we got an idea, but we’re not quite there yet. 01:19:12.000 --> 01:19:27.000 Stuart Winchester: I think the big question for Smugs that I’ve been trying to figure out for a while is, if you want the throwback experience in New England, you just drive an hour down the road to Mount River Glen, and they have a single chair that goes 2,000 vertical feet, and they have great terrain, and they’ve put a lot of money into creating. 01:19:27.000 --> 01:19:38.000 Stuart Winchester: the facade of being a 1940s ski area. But it’s modern, they groom, they make snow below 20-whatever, 100 feet. So, the question, I think, for Smuggler’s Notch is. 01:19:29.000 --> 01:19:30.000 Jonathan Schaefer: Yep. 01:19:38.000 --> 01:19:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Is there room for a second throwback ski area in New England, and do you want it to be that? Do you want, for example, to say, no, we’ll never put in a high-speed lift, like smug should have slow lifts even if they’re, even if they’re new, uh, or, you know, the lift. 01:19:54.000 --> 01:19:59.000 Stuart Winchester: The trail footprint should stay. Do you have any thoughts on modernization? 01:19:56.000 --> 01:20:12.000 Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, it really gets to capacity, Stuart. And this is, this is, it’s like this, it’s almost like the saber metrics of skiing, right? Like where the numbers, what do they mean? I’m sitting here at Berkshire East and pardon the screwdriver, it’s my pointer. 01:19:59.000 --> 01:20:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 01:20:03.000 --> 01:20:05.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 01:20:12.000 --> 01:20:14.000 Jonathan Schaefer: I’ve got two lifts in

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The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is made in the USA. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism. About Caberfae Owned by: The Meyer Family Year founded: 1937 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 2 days, blackouts * Freedom Pass: 3 days, no blackouts Base elevation: 1,076 feet Summit elevation: 1,561 feet Vertical drop: 485 feet Skiable Acres: 200 Average annual snowfall: 120 inches Lift count: 5 (1 fixed-grip quad, 3 triples, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Caberfae’s lift fleet) The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, then click on any text block to teleport to the associated point in the video; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO; also since Tim and Pete were on one screen, the transcript does not differentiate between them). Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the storm. I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026, and we are going to mix things up a little bit today. Instead of starting with the takes, we are starting with the guests, and I have some great guests today. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:40.000 Stuart Winchester: They are the general managers of Cabrifay Peaks, Michigan, with over 200 acres of terrain served by 4 chairlifts across 3 peaks, with a 485-foot vertical drop. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabar Fay is one of the largest ski areas in Michigan’s Lower Penins. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 Stuart Winchester: The ski area averaged 120 inches of lake effect snowfall per winter. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Their family has operated Cabaret since 1980. They are co-general managers, with Tim Meyer on the right, handling everything on the mountain, and Pete Meyer on the left, taking care of everything off. Tim and Pete, welcome to the storm. I’m always hyped to talk Cabaret. How are you guys doing today? 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:11.000 Pete Meyer: Good. We’re doing awesome. Thanks for having us. Yeah. 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and trigger warning for any Sparties or Buckeyes out there who want to go to the video version on stormskiing.com or YouTube. Me and Tim are both proudly rocking our Wolverines gear. This is a shirt I wore to the maze out when Michigan blasted Oklahoma in the big house this past weekend. So we’re feeling. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Although I understand Tim’s also got a little Sparty, side loyalty. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:35.000 Pete Meyer: Yes, my children, both my sons are Spartans, so that’s… 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, as soon as my daughter got into college, I bought all the gear for her place. So, you know, there’s tons going on at Cabaret, and I want to start… 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:36.000 Pete Meyer: It. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:54.000 Stuart Winchester: with this coming expansion, and you, you announced this a while ago, and I’m gonna share my screen here so that everyone can see, uh, see this as we talk through it. 00:23:54.000 --> 00:24:13.000 Stuart Winchester: And this is where I am never quite as fast as I want to be. Uh, but… okay. So, here is the Cabra Fay trail map. This is the one I took off your website this morning, so it’s the most current that I have. Uh, and last time I talked to Tim in, I think, 2021, when you came on the podcast. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it… 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:31.000 Stuart Winchester: This East Peak triple chair was still still in a theory phase and you hadn’t built yet. Now that’s in place and we’ll talk about that in a minute and how that’s gone. But talk to us about the Green Mountain triple chair, what we’re getting and why you’re building it. 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:34.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, so, um… 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.000 Pete Meyer: I’m going to start with why, because it’s kind of an interesting story, you know. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:51.000 Pete Meyer: we… when we put in the East Peak lift, we took out the shelter chairlift, the double. They started in almost the same place, but the shelter… the shelter lift. 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.000 Pete Meyer: let off about halfway up the hill. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:04.000 Pete Meyer: And because we we have our dads before us and then and then we also have continued to develop the terrain. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:13.000 Pete Meyer: the terrain changes and the flow changes. And what happened over time, like, especially over the last. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:16.000 Pete Meyer: 25 years or so. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:23.000 Pete Meyer: we kept adding on to Smiling Irishman and making it wider and wider and wider, and it got busier and busier and busier, so… 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:29.000 Pete Meyer: The shelter chairlift was essentially letting off these new skiers. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:33.000 Pete Meyer: in the middle of flowing traffic. And… 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:37.000 Pete Meyer: We thought when we put in the East Peak lift. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:41.000 Pete Meyer: Now we’re gonna take these lower end skiers to the top. 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:55.000 Pete Meyer: we’re going to give them a longer run, and the new part we’re giving them is actually the easier half. They’re already negotiating the tougher half, the steeper half, and the narrower half. If we add the upper half, it’s easier, it’s wider, it should be fine. 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:06.000 Pete Meyer: And that’s what we thought. And so we put it in and then but then what we found and this is the this is the piece that you learn as you go. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.000 Pete Meyer: is… 00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:15.000 Pete Meyer: The new skiers accepted being let off at the lower level, and having to merge into traffic, because. 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Pete Meyer: They didn’t really know any different and that it was the psychological factor. Well, I’m only halfway up the mountain. I can, I can do this. When we took them up to the top, you know, that East Peak lift actually feels like a out, it almost feels like an out West lift. It has. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:43.000 Pete Meyer: like, three rises, you know? So you ride… you go up over a break, and then you… and then you go again for a while, and then up over another break, and then you’re coming into the top, and you… you know, you’re above… 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:47.000 Pete Meyer: Tree line, basically, and you can see the horizon, and it just… 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Pete Meyer: would kind of psych out that new skier, you know, they would just, they would. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.000 Pete Meyer: They’d get up there and kind of freeze and panic, and… 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:06.000 Pete Meyer: say, there’s no way I’m gonna go down, you know, I’m not gonna go down that hill. And, uh, so we found our ski patrol having to give a lot of lessons just to get people down the hill, and… 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:13.000 Pete Meyer: And, um, and so we, we just, we kind of knew that we had a, you know, a little bit of an issue that we had to work through. 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:21.000 Pete Meyer: And so Pete and I would be talking, you know, and I would say, I think I have it all figured out, you know, I’m saying, um… 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:34.000 Pete Meyer: we just need to give them… make sure that all the… every single new skier gets a lesson, and we get them ready to… you know, we get them ready to go. And a lot of the… a lot of this is the school groups, you know, the different groups, and we do offer lessons. 00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000 Pete Meyer: to everybody, but sometimes they don’t take them, and, you know, they slide, they slide through, and… 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:42.000 Pete Meyer: And so. 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:50.000 Pete Meyer: Pete and I were having a meeting on Green Mountain with our ski patrol director, Katie, and Dennis, one of our top instructors. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:59.000 Pete Meyer: And we think we have it all figured out. You know, we’re just we just need to put them through a lesson and then and then problem solved. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:00.000 Pete Meyer: And… 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:12.000 Pete Meyer: And Dennis, our ski instructor, was like, almost grabbed right onto my jacket. He’s like, you don’t understand. I can’t get them ready for East Peak on this. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:23.000 Pete Meyer: we need something in between, and I… and… and so it’s like, oh, oh, well, what do you need, Dennis? And he pointed up at the Green Mountain, and he said, we need that. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:41.000 Pete Meyer: And I… I said, well, I think we have a plan for that on a cocktail napkin somewhere. We could go look at that again. So basically, what… what hap… what it was is we… we had always had this. We… we actually had lift lines staked out, and we hadn’t been looking at doing this. We just thought it would be… 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:51.000 Pete Meyer: the last thing that we do. We thought we would… we would continue to develop into the… into the backcountry area, and then do the Green Mountain expansion later. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:06.000 Pete Meyer: But what the… what the customer told us was, no, you need the Green Mountain expansion now. So that’s the why and the how, that all of a sudden that thing kind of appeared out of nowhere, and why it was a two… 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:14.000 Pete Meyer: why it’s a two-year construction, because there’s nothing over there. No services. Um, so we’ve had… we had to… 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:18.000 Pete Meyer: You know, we had to do th

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast likes it when ski areas are run by people who are good at running ski areas. Please subscribe to the email newsletter to get new posts the moment they’re live. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism. About Camelback Owned by: EPR Properties, managed by Peregrine Hospitality (formerly KSL Resorts) Located in: Tannersville, Pennsylvania Year founded: 1963 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts * Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackouts 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: 45, with three new trails for 2026-27 (not on the map below, but discussed on the podcast) Lift count: 12 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 2 doubles, 5 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Camelback’s lift fleet) For reference: The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, then click on any text block to teleport to the associated point in the video; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO) 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Wednesday, September 16th, 2026, and I’ve got a really good show for you today. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:45.000 Stuart Winchester: we’re going to talk some Pennsylvania skiing. And Pennsylvania skiing is a really interesting thing. As I travel around the country. 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Stuart Winchester: and ski at all these different places in the Midwest, and out West, and in New England, and in the Mid-Atlantic. Uh, and as I talk to folks who… who don’t ski that much, or only ski at the big mountains. 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:05.000 Stuart Winchester: I’ll often bring up some experience I had at a Pennsylvania ski area. Pennsylvania has quite a few ski areas as 21. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:20.000 Stuart Winchester: public chairlift-served ski areas, and it does 2.6 million skier visits on average per year. That is more than any state except for Colorado, California, Utah, Vermont, and New York. 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:26.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s more than Washington, it’s more than Oregon, it’s more than Montana, it’s more than New. 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:39.000 Stuart Winchester: So, Pennsylvania is a really important ski state, which is probably why Vail Resorts owns 8 ski areas there, because it is really close to a lot of population centers. In western PA, you have Pittsburgh. 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:54.000 Stuart Winchester: and Seven Springs, and Laurel, and Hidden Valley, and then you have Philadelphia on the east side, and you can also draw up from Baltimore and D.C. for Round Top and Whitetail. And uh… 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000 Stuart Winchester: And Jack Frost’s Big Boulder up in the Poconos. So… 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Vail has a big presence there. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Icon has a presence there with Camelback and Blue Mountain. Uh, and then Indy Pass just signed their 8th ski area in Pennsylvania with Spring Mountain, uh, down near Philadelphia. So, so it’s, it’s a place where a lot of skiers start. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.000 Stuart Winchester: And it’s a little bit of a funny place to ski, because… 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:29.000 Stuart Winchester: it tends to have an outsized number of novice skiers, which is great. They’re very good at doing that. Uh, but it can make it a little chaotic. 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:38.000 Stuart Winchester: And the lift lines can get a little crazy, and people are all over the hill, and sometimes they’re walking down the hill because they’re frustrated and they’re giving up. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and… 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 Stuart Winchester: You take that as your baseline in Pennsylvania. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:49.000 Stuart Winchester: And you had any sort of complications. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Stuart Winchester: And things get out of hand really quickly. And in general. 00:05:55.000 --> 00:06:00.000 Stuart Winchester: For that reason, the ski areas that have survived in Pennsylvania. 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:07.000 Stuart Winchester: are among the best operators in the world, and I would put that up against anyone. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:14.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s a very, very challenging environment, not only because you have a high number of novice skiers. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, but also because you have… 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:31.000 Stuart Winchester: not a ton of snow, sometimes in the west part of the state, where there’s higher elevation, they do get a lot of snow, but… but not as a rule, you couldn’t count on it for natural snow. Uh, you get a lot of rain, you get a lot of warm-ups. 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and… and you, in general, have to rely on… 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:42.000 Stuart Winchester: a very short season, generally mid-December-ish to mid-March-ish. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.000 Stuart Winchester: And the skiers there… 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:52.000 Stuart Winchester: They’re they’re accustomed to a pretty high standard, so. 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:57.000 Stuart Winchester: So when things do get out of control, uh… 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:04.000 Stuart Winchester: They really rebelled, and they really noticed. So, a couple years ago, this is what happened at Camelback. So, Camelback… 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:09.000 Stuart Winchester: You know, I don’t generally do ops stories, uh… 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:10.000 Stuart Winchester: You know. 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:19.000 Stuart Winchester: ski area didn’t groom this run, or they haven’t opened this lift, or, uh, you know, they usually let this bump up, but they don’t, or, or… 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:27.000 Stuart Winchester: you know, they… they are trying to save money, or they’re being cheap. I generally don’t bother with those, even though I get a lot of messages. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:32.000 Stuart Winchester: Complaining about things like that, because there’s almost always a pretty good reason. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and it’s almost always temporary, and it’s really not worth the effort. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:48.000 Stuart Winchester: to write the story if I’m just writing about, you know, why Stratton or Mount Snow or Magic Mountain didn’t open a certain lift on a certain day. 00:07:48.000 --> 00:08:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it’s, it’s a lot to track down and it’s a lot of, uh, this person said this and the other person said that. It’s just not the kind of thing that I’m want to cover with the storm, right? I want to do bigger stories. I want to do trend stories. I want to look at the culture and evolution of skiing. 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:11.000 Stuart Winchester: And the passes, and all the infrastructure, and all the fun stuff. So I don’t generally cover the day-to-day stuff, just because… 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:18.000 Stuart Winchester: The ski areas that remain in 2026 are, for the most part, run by really good operators. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:32.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it… because… and they’ve survived. Most of the bad ski areas that were either mismanaged or were in the wrong places, they went out of business a long time ago, which is why the number of ski areas has been stable for around 25 years now in America. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:35.000 Stuart Winchester: So I but I started to notice. 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:45.000 Stuart Winchester: several years ago that I was getting an outsized number of complaints around one ski area in particular in the Poconos. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And it was Camelback. 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:51.000 Stuart Winchester: And Camelback had a long history of being an independent. 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:52.000 Stuart Winchester: And… 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Really… 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000 Stuart Winchester: the way it’s been described to me by… by season pass holders, and I’ve skied… 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:04.000 Stuart Winchester: some at Camelback, but I don’t have that depth of knowledge of having grown up there. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:20.000 Stuart Winchester: That Camelback for a long time, for decades, set the standard on snowmaking, on grooming, on just general maintenance of lifts in the ski area in the Poconos. And that was why they had chosen to ski there all those years. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:30.000 Stuart Winchester: But things had started to fall apart when a new owner showed up in 2019. It was at the time KSL Capital, who was. 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:43.000 Stuart Winchester: was managing it for EPR Properties, which is the entity that bought it, and they own a bunch of ski areas, EPR Properties, including a bunch owned by Vail, including North Star, and a lot of the old Peak Resorts in Ohio and such. 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:50.000 Stuart Winchester: And KSL Resorts was a division of KSL Capital. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.000 Stuart Winchester: which is a part owner of Altera. 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:58.000 Stuart Winchester: But for some reason, Altera, which is very good at running ski resorts. 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000 Stuart Winchester: did not… 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:15.000 Stuart Winchester: get assigned as the… as the owner of Camelback. And when KSL Resorts purchased Blue Mountain, not in Ontario, the Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania, that’s about 45 minutes from Ca

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Welcome to the Storm’s short-form, news-focused podcast. Don’t worry, I still write long-form newsletters. Paid subscribers can leave a comment in the article below, or by joining The Storm’s chat (also below). I’ll respond to some comments in the next episode, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 16. Transcript update Following up on yesterday’s feedback, there are now two transcripts available for each podcast: * Substack’s transcript: This transcript is auto-generated when I upload the podcast file to Substack, which is the platform that hosts stormskiing.com. This one is cool because you can click on any block of text and the audio will jump to that point in the conversation. Click the “transcript” button above to access. * Zoom’s transcript: Zoom automatically generates this transcript as I record. It should be more or less identical to Substack’s transcript, but with names attached to each quote block. The downside of this transcript is that you can’t teleport to that point in the pod by clicking on the text block, as you can with Substack’s. Another downside: the timestamps are off, since I typically start recording prior to the start of the podcast. I’ll work on cleaning this up. So until the robots get smarter, we’re stuck with two different transcripts. Both are auto-generated, and I don’t proofread either one, as that would be the fastest way to make sure my quick-turnaround, up-to-date podcast turns into a slow-turnaround, out-of-date one. My hope is that Substack will soon hire or invent or weld from raw iron a robot that’s smart enough to know who’s speaking when. I’ll just keep following the robots around and using their hyper-intelligence until they decide to kill me. The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, which will zoom to any point in the video when you click on the associated text block; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO) Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. It is Tuesday, September 15th, 2026, and I am very excited today to bring you a conversation with the General Manager of Monarch Mountain, Colorado, Chris Haggerty. Now, I’ve never featured Monarch either on the long-form pod or on the short-form pod. 00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:11.000 Stuart Winchester: There’s never really a reason behind that, other than this is just kind of when it happened. If you run an area, a ski area anywhere in America, I do want to talk to you. I’ve just never had the opportunity to feature Monarch before, so we will talk about Monarch in just a little bit here. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Part of the reason why we’re talking about Monarch is because they were one of two Western Mountains to this year join Snow Operating’s Snow Pass. Now, the Snow Pass, if you missed the news, it works a lot like the Indy Pass or the Mountain Collective Pass, where you get two days each. 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:37.000 Stuart Winchester: at a set number of ski areas. In this case, it’s planned to be 14 ski areas for the 2026-27 ski season. And… 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:45.000 Stuart Winchester: That product went on sale last Tuesday. I had Snow Operating CEO Joe Heschen on the podcast to talk through it with us. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:11:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Couple days later, I got an email from Snow Operating saying, Hey, guess what? Our first round of Snow Operating and Snow Triple Play, which are two different products, and I’ll explain the difference in a moment, sold out. So we’re taking it off sale. We’re putting it back on sale next Monday, September 21st. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:13.000 Stuart Winchester: at 10 a.m. Eastern. It will be $349.99 for Snowpass, and $184.99 for Snow Triple Play. Still a pretty good deal. Those products at full price. 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:24.000 Stuart Winchester: the prices that Snow Partners gave me, and they anticipate selling both products through Christmas Eve, December 24th, just like they did last year with the first season of the Triple Play. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:40.000 Stuart Winchester: They, the final prices they anticipate will be 3 99 99 for snow pass and 1 99 99 for snow triple play. So you get a nice little discount, particularly with the snow pass, $50 off if you buy it in the next round. So let’s talk a little bit about the snow pass because. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.000 Stuart Winchester: When this product debuted. 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:53.000 Stuart Winchester: I… I’ve been saying for years, there’s 4 national ski passes, right? There’s obviously Epic and Icon, and those have some season pass unlimited tiers at certain mountains. 00:11:53.000 --> 00:12:08.000 Stuart Winchester: And a limited number of days at other partner mountains. And then you have Indian Mountain Collective, which essentially worked the same way, 2 days at each ski area that is on their roster. Uh, Mountain Collective is more expensive, tends to be your bigger, more high-end resorts, Snowbird, Jackson Hole. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, Sun Peaks up in Canada. And Indy tended to be the lesser-known ski areas, but still some really dynamite stuff there, and a lot more ski areas. Mountain Collective always has around 30, and Indy is more like 250, not counting their cross-country. 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:36.000 Stuart Winchester: ski areas. So, I always thought there was probably room for a fifth national pass, but I wasn’t sure, and as time went on, and more and more mountains joined multi-mountain passes. 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:37.000 Stuart Winchester: I… 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:41.000 Stuart Winchester: I thought, okay, maybe there’s not room for a fifth national pass. Maybe everyone who’s… 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:44.000 Stuart Winchester: who wants to join a pass has, because I know Indy, uh. 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:58.000 Stuart Winchester: Now, I’m not saying they don’t have standards, but they’ll let just about anybody on the pass just to help them get that exposure and that national marketing. But Snow Operating, the outfit that owns Mountain Creek in New Jersey and the indoor big snow ski area in New Jersey, they launched. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:15.000 Stuart Winchester: their Snow Pass, and it’s a pretty good roster. Here, I’m gonna share my screen for those of you watching on video, and if you’re not watching on video, don’t worry, I’m gonna talk through it. So, here’s the Snow Triple Play East roster, and here’s the Snow Pass roster. Now, the Snow Pass has 14 ski areas on it. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:18.000 Stuart Winchester: And you get 2 days at each ski area. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:22.000 Stuart Winchester: The Snow Triple Play has… 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:27.000 Stuart Winchester: 23 total ski areas on it, and you get 3 days total. 00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:43.000 Stuart Winchester: across all 23 ski areas. That’s why it’s so much less expensive. The most days you can use at any ski area is 2, so you can’t buy this as a 3-pack Force A Gore Mountain, alright? So, that’s the first important. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:59.000 Stuart Winchester: distinction is that Snow Triple Play is a much more limited basket of days. You also don’t want to assume that they have the same roster. Just because something’s on Snow Pass doesn’t mean it’s on Snow Triple Play, and vice versa. Snow Triple Play right now has a pretty… 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Big roster that I wish was on the, uh, Snow Pass, because it has Jiminy Peak in, uh, Massachusetts, and also Cranmore in New Hampshire, which is jointly owned. It has Platykill up in the New York Catskills. 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:30.000 Stuart Winchester: It has all these summit ski areas around Quebec. It has Bromont, one of the great eastern townships ski areas. Uh, so that’s Snow Triple Play. Snow Triple Play does not have anything in the west. It’s all east. It’s all east coast, either eastern Canada or eastern New York. 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, Snow Pass has… it’s a pretty interesting roster, and it’s a great roster for a very particular type of skier. Now, it does have two ski areas in the West, uh, Snow King, which has been controversial, I’m gonna set that aside, and Monarch, which we’ll talk about in a moment. 00:14:45.000 --> 00:15:00.000 Stuart Winchester: The core of the Snow Pass, and the reason why it makes sense, is because of the south to north line of ski areas that it offers. So if you buy the Snow Pass, again, goes back on sale for $349.99 next Monday, September 21st. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:05.000 Stuart Winchester: You would get two days each at Bel Air, which is in New York’s Catskills. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.000 Stuart Winchester: Gore. 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:16.000 Stuart Winchester: higher up in the Adirondacks, and Whiteface, which are all owned and run and operated by the state, all fantastic ski areas. So it’s 2 days at each of those, that alone would be worth $350. 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:33.000 Stuart Winchester: Then you add in the fact that you get two days at Mountain Creek, which is right there in New Jersey, uh, two days at the indoor snow dome, big snow American dream. Uh, if you have kids, two days at Butternut and two days at Mount Southington in Connecticut. Uh, Butternut is in Massachusetts. They’re both day drive distance from New York City. 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:42.000 Stuart Winchester: Let them wander around, let them explore. They’re both, uh, especially Butternut. It’s very up-to-date, very modern lifts, very, very well-run ski area. So… 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:45.000 Stuart Winchester: You have a really great little, you know. 00:15:46.000 --