Podcast #191: Stratton Mountain President & COO Matt Jones

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 20. To receive future episodes as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:

Who

Matt Jones, President and Chief Operating Officer of Stratton Mountain, Vermont

Recorded on

November 11, 2024

About Stratton Mountain

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Alterra Mountain Company, which also owns:

Located in: Winhall, Vermont

Year founded: 1962

Pass affiliations:

* Ikon Pass: Unlimited

* Ikon Base Pass: Unlimited, holiday blackouts

Closest neighboring ski areas: Bromley (:18), Magic (:24), Mount Snow (:28), Hermitage Club (:33), Okemo (:40), Brattleboro (:52)

Base elevation: 1,872 feet

Summit elevation: 3,875 feet

Vertical drop: 2,003 feet

Skiable Acres: 670

Average annual snowfall: 180 inches

Trail count: 99 (40% novice, 35% intermediate, 16% advanced, 9% expert)

Lift count: 14 (1 ten-passenger gondola, 4 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 4 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Stratton’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

I don’t know for sure how many skier visits Stratton pulls each winter, or where the ski area ranks among New England mountains for busyness. Historical data suggests a floor around 400,000 visits, likely good for fifth in the region, behind Killington, Okemo, Sunday River, and Mount Snow. But the exact numbers don’t really matter, because the number of skiers that ski at Stratton each winter is many manys. And the number of skiers who have strong opinions about Stratton is that exact same number.

Those numbers make Stratton more important than it should be. This is not the best ski area in Vermont. It’s not even Alterra’s best ski area in Vermont. Jay, MRG, Killington, Smuggs, Stowe, and sister resort Sugarbush are objectively better mountains than Stratton from a terrain point of view (they also get a lot more snow). But this may be one of the most crucial mountains in Alterra’s portfolio, a doorway to the big-money East, a brand name for skiers across the region. Stratton is the only ski area that advertises in the New York City Subway, and has for years.

But Stratton’s been under a bit of stress. The lift system is aging. The gondola is terrible. Stratton was one of those ski areas that was so far ahead of the modernization curve – the mountain had four six-packs by 2001 – that it’s now in the position of having to update all of that expensive stuff all at once. And as meaningful updates have lagged, Stratton’s biggest New England competitors are running superlifts up the incline at a historic pace, while Alterra lobs hundreds of millions at its western megaresorts. Locals feel shafted, picketing an absentee landlord that they view as negligent. Meanwhile, the crowds pile up, as unlimited Ikon Pass access has holstered the mountain in hundreds of thousands of skiers’ wintertime battle belts.

If that all sounds a little dramatic, it only reflects the messages in my inbox. I think Alterra has been cc’d on at least some of those emails, because the company is tossing $20 mill