The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

Stuart Winchester
  • 4.8 (267)
  • Wilderness

Everyone’s searching for skiing’s soul. I’m trying to find its brains. www.stormskiing.com

  1. 9h ago

    Storm Skiing 10/6/2026: Breaking Down Epic, Ikon, Indy, Mountain Collective with PeakRankings Founder Sam Weintraub

    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

  2. 1d ago

    Storm News 9/28/2026: Alterra Appoints Kelly Vohs CEO + Mountain Creek GM Evan Kovach

    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:

  3. 3d ago

    Storm Skiing 10/3/2026: Holiday Valley’s Chairlift Diaspora with GM Dennis Eshbaugh

    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

  4. 4d ago

    Storm Skiing 10/2/2026: Mount Southington GM Jay Dougherty on Lift Upgrades, Snow Pass, & More

    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

  5. 6d ago

    Storm Skiing 9/30/2026: Indy Pass & Snowvana Founder Doug Fish on Megapass Proliferation and the Future of Ski Shows

    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

  6. Sep 29

    Storm News 9/29/2026: 6 Takeaways from Vail Resorts’ Q4 Earnings

    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

  7. Sep 28

    Storm Skiing 9/28/2026: Pajarito’s Massive Snowmaking Upgrade with GM Jasen Bellomy

    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

  8. Sep 26

    Storm Skiing 9/26/2026: Fixing America’s Broken Ski School Model with Snow Schoolers’ Brian Bensch

    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

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Everyone’s searching for skiing’s soul. I’m trying to find its brains. www.stormskiing.com

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