The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

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Who

Alan Henceroth, Chief Operating Officer of Arapahoe Basin, Colorado

Recorded on

April 12, 2022

About Arapahoe Basin

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Dundee Resort Development

Base elevation: 10,520 feet

Summit elevation: 13,050 feet

Vertical drop: 2,530 feet

Skiable Acres: 1,428

Average annual snowfall: 350 inches

Trail count: 147 (24% double-black, 49% black, 20% intermediate, 7% beginner)

Lift count: 9 (2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple [to be replaced with a high-speed six-pack this summer], 1 double, 2 carpets, 1 J-tow - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Arapahoe Basin’s lift fleet)

Uphill capacity: 11,300 skiers per hour

Why I interviewed him

The Legend. Ski area taglines are typically rocket fuel for The Storm’s wiseass machine, but this one fits. Hard against the Continental Divide, Arapahoe Basin is the third-highest ski area in America, trailing only Monarch (10,790 feet) and Loveland (10,800) at its base, and Telluride (13,150) and Silverton (13,487), at its peak. Its legacy is 10th Mountain Division resourcefulness, an improbable place rising up and over the treeline, hacked out of the remote 1940s American wilderness. The ski area opens in October. It closes in June. Sometimes later (sometimes much later). In Conglomerate County USA, it is the rowdy independent, owned by Some Company Up In Canada, its extremes laced with ferocious double-blacks. There is no lodging. No phony village. No special rich-guy lanes. Just skiing.

Damn good skiing, fed by 350 inches of average annual snowfall. This is a ski area, not a ski resort. And in approachable Summit County, with its green-blue acres appropriately tilted for destination-wired Texans and New Yorkers, its groves of high-speed super-lifts, its sprawling mountains perfectly divided by ability, we might assume that such a rowdy outfit, five miles past faux-village Keystone, half the size and with six fewer high-speed chairlifts, might wilt from the pressure. But A-Basin has a pull. Sort North America’s ski areas by size, and the bias is clear: just about any western resort under 2,000 acres was left off the Epic, Ikon, and Mountain Collective passes. But when Arapahoe Basin broke up with Vail in 2019, after a 22-year-partnership, Ikon and Mountain Collective were waiting in the driveway with a dozen roses and a ride to prom. Meanwhile, Loveland, just three miles away, 300 acres bigger, and infinitely easier to get to (its address is literally Interstate 70, Dillon, Colorado), continues to be shut out (or they’re just not interested).

Anyone who’s skied there (and everyone has skied there), knows that Summit County is a special place. There’s a reason why it’s ground zero for America’s industrial snowsports machine. Copper, Breck, and Keystone have 79 lifts between them, including 10 six-packs, 16 high-speed quads, and four gondolas or chondolas. Eight and a half thousand acres of Epkonic terrain lurching within easy access of the interstate. And yet, there’s room for something different too. Something special. Something Legendary.

What we talked about

What the A-Basin crew does when Interstate 70 is closed and it’s dumping outside; the mountain’s 10th Mountain Division legacy; the audacity of 1946 A-Basin; what the ski area looked like when Henceroth showed up in 1988; the characters animating the mountain; ski-bumming and working in Summit County in the ‘80s; Arizona Snowbowl; yes a dog-food company used to own the ski area; The Legend’s terrain; recollections of rescues as Ski Patrol Director; the art of avalanche control; A-Basin’s unique position at the top of Summit County and at ground zero of every major issue in U.S. skiing; the hidden drama behind Vail’s purchase of Keystone, Breck, and A-Basin, and why the company had to pick one to sell; why and how A-Basin ended up on the Epic Pass; the historical inflection point that launched the large-scale ski season pass wars; the Epic Pass breaking point; breaking up with Vail – “it was a surprise to everyone”; the upsides of the Epic Pass; Vail’s stingy spring skiing legacy; how and why A-Basin joined the Ikon and Mountain Collecti...

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NOTE: a few minutes ago, I published a comprehensive breakdown of Summit at Snoqualmie’s 2030 plan, which we discuss at length in this podcast. Click here to view that article, which includes detailed breakdowns of the plan, along with diagrams of the new lift alignments at each ski area.

Who

Guy Lawrence, President and General Manager of The Summit at Snoqualmie, Washington

Recorded on

April 18, 2022

About Summit at Snoqualmie

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Boyne Resorts

Base elevation | summit elevation | vertical drop:

Alpental: 3,140 feet | 5,420 feet | 2,280 feet

Summit East: 2,610 feet | 3,710 feet | 1,100 feet

Summit Central: 2,840 feet | 3,865 feet | 1,025 feet

Summit West: 3,000 feet | 3,765 feet | 765 feet

Skiable Acres: 1,994 (600 acres of night skiing)

Alpental: 875 (including back bowls)

Summit East: 385 acres

Summit Central: 474 acres

Summit West: 260 acres

Average annual snowfall: 426 inches (varies by area)

Trail count: 150 (11% expert, 42% advanced, 33% intermediate, 14% beginner)

Terrain parks: 2

Lift count: 24 (3 high-speed quads, 4 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 9 doubles, 5 surface lifts - view Lift Blog’s inventory of The Summit at Snoqualmie’s lift fleet)

Trail maps:

Why I interviewed him

What is this wild place, four ski areas in one, scattered about the high ground like wintry little islands 50 miles east of the snowless coastal city? 400 inches of snow and no logic to it at all, dumping at 3,000 feet when the rain line is at 4,000, the Cascade Concrete of legend, except when it isn’t. The funny name and the funny trail map, the ski areas nothing like one another, as confusing a thing as there is in American skiing.

Boyne once owned two ski resorts in Washington. There was Crystal, and then there was this. Whatever this was. Maybe a feeder and maybe something else. And oh wait that’s where Alpental is? Why didn’t they just say that? Crystal is gone (it’s still there), but Boyne held onto this. And now we’re getting a real good sense of what this is.

I don’t know if it was the Ikon Pass or the runaway West Coast tech wealth or the Covid-driven outdoor explosion or the spread-the-word crowdsourcing supernova of social media, but suddenly Summit at Snoqualmie is One Of Those Places That We Talk About. Part of the overrun Washington trio that also includes Crystal and Stevens. The rest of the state’s ski areas are too remote to matter, at least for now, at least in that way. But these three have problems. Traffic problems and parking lot problems and liftline problems and terrain-management problems and, sometimes, too-much-snow-all-at-once problems. They’re all handling them different. Crystal has morphed from Ikon bottom-feeder to $1,699 season pass elitist with intricate parking-and-access policies in just two seasons. Stevens is hoping new management and a higher wage can offset the debilitating crowds driven by season passes that cost the same as one month of Netflix.

And Summit is doing what Boyne does: rethinking and rebuilding the resort to adapt to the modern ski experience. Washington State in 2022 is a tough place to make it as a ski resort, and I wanted to talk to the person in charge of Summit to understand exactly how they planned to do that.

What we talked about

The 2021-22 ski season; potential Summit closing dates; the T-bar ride that changed a life; Australia’s sprawling Perisher ski area; the majesty of European skiing; Vail Mountain; Badger Pass; Booth Creek; Summit and Washington in the homey ‘90s; when skier traffic started to explode; the founding of the four Summit at Snoqualmie ski areas and how they came together into the modern resort; why they’re bucketed as one ski area even though Alpental is separated by Interstate 90 and about two dozen cliff bands; why Summit East, Central, and West still have distinct trailmaps even though they are side by s...

Download this episode on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, and Pocket Casts | Read the full overview at skiing.substack.com.

What this is: This is the ninth in a series of conversations exploring the ski industry fallout from the COVID-19-forced closure of nearly every ski area on the continent in March 2020. Click through to listen to the first eight: author Chris Diamond, Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher, Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway, NSAA CEO Kelly Pawlak, Berkshire East/Catamount Owner & Goggles for Docs founder Jon Schaefer, Shaggy’s Copper Country Skis Cofounder Jeff Thompson, Doppelmayr USA President Katharina Schmitz, Mt. Baldy GM Robby Ellingson

Who: Rusty Gregory, Alterra Mountain Company CEO

Why I interviewed him: Because as skiing has evolved into a megapass-anchored duopoly that has trained consumers to feel entitled to cheap access to as many mountains as possible, the consequences of those large players’ decisions has been amplified considerably. When Vail and Alterra shut down their entire North American networks of nearly 50 ski areas on March 14, the impact reverberated in immediate and wide-ranging ways that would have been difficult to imagine even five years ago. Now, as both step out of the wreckage and try to make good with passholders still fuming about shortened seasons while acknowledging that next season isn’t close to being assured, we are collectively witnessing the kind of real-time business adaptation that normally takes years to occur. How Alterra resets the Ikon Pass now will influence not only how smaller mountains adjust their offerings, but what skiers’ pass expectations will be long after Covid-19 has burned out. Looming over all of this is the possibility that the 2020-21 ski season could be a very dystopian, socially distant affair, with capacity limits and restricted access to just about everything. How Alterra is evolving in the shutdown’s aftermath and preparing for the possibility of a very odd 2020-21 season is one of the most important stories in skiing right now.

Alterra’s Steamboat ski area in February 2020.

What we talked about: How the shutdown progressed and the catalysts behind the ultimate decision to close; how using Crystal Mountain as a laboratory told them social distancing at massive ski areas was unsustainable; the chaos and uncertainty of March 14, which turned out to be shutdown day; the creeping atmosphere of fear in ski towns as the virus spread; the impossible decision of shuttering 15 North American ski resorts in the midst of peak season when hundreds of thousands of skiers are planning on booting up the next day; second-guessing the shutdown decision and how long those doubts lasted; dealing with Angry Ski Bro in the moment; Dude Brah are you really going to shut Squaw when we’re about to get dumped on?; managing thousands of layoffs and furloughs and helping move those who wanted t...

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Who

Rusty Gregory, CEO of Alterra Mountain Company, owner of the Ikon Pass

Recorded on

June 23, 2022

About Alterra Mountain Company

Owned by: KSL Capital and Henry Crown and Company

About the Ikon Pass

Here’s a breakdown of all the ski areas that are party to Alterra’s Ikon Pass:

Why I interviewed him

In its first five years, Alterra has gotten just about everything right – or about as right as any ski company can as it Starfoxes its way through an asteroid belt filled with Covid and empowered workers and shattered supply chains and The Day After Tomorrow weather patterns and an evolving social fabric and the sudden realization by U.S. Americans that there’s such a thing as outside. The company changed the name of one of America’s iconic resorts, managed a near meltdown of its Pacific Northwest anchor, met Covid as well as it could, and continually tweaked Ikon Pass access tiers to avoid overwhelming partner mountains while still offering skiers good value. Oh, and adding Sun Valley, Snowbasin, Chamonix, Dolomiti Superski, Kitzbühel, Schweitzer, Red Mountain, Mt. Bachelor, and Windham to the pass – all since Covid hit.

If it’s all seemed a little improvisational and surprising, that’s because it has been. “I have a great propensity for enjoying chaos and anarchy,” Gregory tells me in the podcast. That explains a lot. In the frantic weeks after Covid zipped North American skiing shut in March 2020, angry skiers demanded concessions for lost spring skiing. Vail released, all at once, an encyclopedic Epic Pass credit plan, which metered discounts based upon number of days skied and introduced an “Epic Coverage” program that secured your investment in the event of everything from a Covid resurgence to the death of a beloved houseplant. Alterra, meanwhile, spun its plan together in four dispatches weeks apart – a renewal discount here, a deferral policy there, an extension six weeks later. “We’re continuing to strengthen our offerings,” Gregory told me on the podcast mid-way through this staggered rollout.

In other words, Dude, just chill. We’ll get it right. Whether they ultimately did or not – with their Covid response or anything else – is a bit subjective. But I think they’ve gotten more right than wrong. There was nothing inevitable about Alterra or the Ikon Pass. Vail launched the Epic Pass in 2008. It took a decade for the industry to come up with an effective response. The Mountain Collective managed to gather all the best indies into a crew, but its reach was limited, with just two days at each partner. M.A.X. Pass, with five days per partner, got closer, but it was short on alpha mountains such as Jackson Hole or Snowbird (it did feature Big Sky,...

Download this episode on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher,TuneIn, and Pocket Casts | Read the full overview at skiing.substack.com.

What this is: This is the fourth in a series of short conversations exploring the fallout to the ski industry from the COVID-19-forced closure of nearly every ski area on the continent in March 2020. Click through to listen to the first three: author Chris Diamond, Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher, Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway.

Who: Kelly Pawlak, President and CEO of the National Ski Areas Association

Why I interviewed her: The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that the president signed into law on March 27 is 880 pages long, meaning that approximately zero people have read the entire thing. While there are plenty of high-level breakdowns itemizing what the act delivers American individuals and businesses, it’s less obvious what this titanic relief bill means for the ski industry and its nearly 1 million employees. As the primary trade group representing U.S. ski areas, the National Ski Areas Association’s mission over the past several weeks has been to raise its hand on behalf of the collective industry and say, “Hey Congress, don’t forget about us.” I wanted to get a sense of exactly what the bill offered ski areas large and small, and to gauge what else the NSAA was prioritizing over what is set to be a very long slog back to skiers riding lifts up mountainsides. Also, the industry seems extremely satisfied with the NSAA at the moment (Steve Wright is the GM of Jay Peak; Christian Knapp, who comments on the thread, is the CMO of Aspen-Snowmass):

What we talked about: The factors behind the NSAA’s estimate that U.S. ski areas will lose $2 billion from the COVID-19 shutdown; the ripple effect of cancelling large capital projects; how much U.S. ski areas invest in capital per skier visit; the importance of summer business and what it will mean if that goes away; what’s in the CARES Act for ski areas and their employees and why it may take a while to sort all that out; the risks of being overlooked for relief money as a seasonal business whose season was three-quarters of the way over; how to get attention for the ski industry when the entire economy collapsed, taking just about every industry with it; the different CARES Act aid that small and large ski areas are eligible for; how the NSAA is approaching the next possible round of Congressional stimulus; how to avoid the, “What do you guys need money for, is there even still skiing in March?” trap when jockeying for that cash; the crucial role of ski areas to rural economies; the Congressional Ski and Snowboard Caucus sounds fun – what is it?; Forest Service land lease fees that 122 U.S. ski areas pay each year could be waived or deferred; the problem with business interruption insurance; is Ski Blandford a bellwether for a wave of independent ski area closings in the COVID aftermath?; echoes of Mount Snow-Haystack in the failure of Butternut subsidizing Blandford; when and why the NSAA cancelled their annual trade show and convention for the first time in 58 years and what they’re doing instead; how the industry is embracing this whole thing as a learning opportunity

What I got wrong: I said that Vail had cancelled all of its capital spending for the rest of the year, but that is incorrect: they are