Podcast #82: Arapahoe Basin Chief Operating Officer Alan Henceroth

04/14/22 • -1 min

2 Listeners

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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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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)

Uphill capacity: 11,300 skiers per hour

Why I interviewed him

What we talked about

Previous Episode

Podcast #81: Big Sky President and Chief Operating Officer Taylor Middleton

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Who

Taylor Middleton, President and Chief Operating Officer of Big Sky Resort, Montana

Recorded on

April 4, 2022

About Big Sky

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Boyne Resorts

Base elevation: 6,800 feet at Madison Base

Summit elevation: 11,166 feet

Vertical drop: 4,350 feet

Skiable Acres: 5,850

Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inches

Trail count: 300 (18% expert, 35% advanced, 25% intermediate, 22% beginner)

Terrain parks: 6

Lift count: 39 (1 15-passenger tram, 1 high-speed eight-pack, 3 high-speed six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 9 triples, 5 doubles, 3 platters, 2 ropetows, 8 carpet lifts) – View Lift Blog’s inventory of Big Sky’s lift fleet.

Uphill capacity: 41,000 skiers per hour

Why I interviewed him

Big Sky opened in 1973, as the American ski industry’s big-mountain land grab was fizzling. Seven years later, Taylor Middleton wandered into town, an Alabama boy wired for adventure. What he found an hour and five minutes south of Bozeman, population 21,645 at the time, was a backwater bump of the sort that still populate the Montana wilds: four or five lifts, 20 or so runs, Lone Peak hovering godlike over it all. A hell of a view and dumptrucks worth of snow and not a whole lot else.

Over the next 42 years, Big Sky would evolve into one of North America’s great ski areas. The Storm, as regular readers know, can be prone to hyperbole. My worldview is tilted toward ennoblement. Even the scraggliest lift-served snowsliding outposts have virtue in their histories, their idiosyncrasies, their improbable continued existence in a world that frustrates such ventures in 10 dozen ways.

That won’t be necessary here. Big Sky is titanic, sprawling, impossible. Alps-like in its scale and above-treeline drama. Mixed into the 300 named trails are two dozen-ish triple black diamonds. They mean it: to ski Big Couloir or North Summit Snowfield off the top of the tram requires an avalanche beacon, a partner, and a sign-out with Patrol.

But this radness is a small part of the experience. At almost 6,000 acres, Big Sky is nearly the same size as Boyne’s other nine resorts combined*. It is the third-largest ski area in the United States, and it took the combination of Park City with neighboring Park West (7,300 acres), and the connection of the Alpine Meadows and Olympic sides of Palisades Tahoe (6,000 acres) to out-big Big Sky (Big Sky is itself the combination of two ski areas, as it absorbed the old Moonlight Basin in 2013). Even when the base-to-base gondola finally cracks open over Tahoe next year, Palisades Tahoe’s terrain will remain fragmented. Endless, nearly boundless skiing of the sort that defines Big Sky is rare in America.

Which takes us back to Middleton. Big Sky could have been a lot of things in underdeveloped Montana. A rugged single-chair backwater like Turner. A teaser that stopped short of the looming snowfields, like Teton Pass. A fun but lost-in-time burner like Lost Trail. A regional hotshot like Bridger Bowl, with slow lifts, rad terrain, and lots of hiking. Instead it’s one of the most complete and up-to-date ski resorts in North America. How did that happen? Most American ski resorts are just old enough that the pioneering generation, the one that actualized a dream out of the wilderness, are long gone. Big Sky will be 50 years old next year, but for a lot of reasons – not the least among them a stable ownership group (Boyne has owned the ski area since 1976) – a lot of the people who helped mold the place into a monster are still around.

Middleton did not just watch all of this happen – he’s a big part of the reason it happened at all. I wanted to hear his story, and the story of the mountain, firsthand.

*Boyne’s nine other ski areas total 7,200 acres: Summit at Snoqualmie (1,981 acres), Sugarloaf (1,230), Brighton (1,050), Sunday River (870), Cypress (600), The Highlands at Harbor Springs (435), Boyne Mountain (415), Loon (370), and Shawnee Peak (249).

What we talked about

The 2021-22 ski season so far at Big Sky; how an Alabama boy ended up running one of the biggest ski resorts in America; ye...

Next Episode

Podcast #83: The Summit at Snoqualmie President and General Manager Guy Lawrence

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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...