Podcast #92: Alterra Mountain Company CEO Rusty Gregory

06/28/22 • 91 min

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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,...

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

Previous Episode

Podcast #91: Snow Partners (Big Snow, Mountain Creek) CEO Joe Hession

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Who

Joe Hession, CEO of Snow Partners, owners of Mountain Creek, Big Snow American Dream, Snowcloud, and Terrain Based Learning

Recorded on

June 15, 2022

About Mountain Creek

Located in: Vernon Township, New Jersey

Closest neighboring ski areas: National Winter Activity Center, New Jersey (6 minutes); Mount Peter, New York (24 minutes); Campgaw, New Jersey (51 minutes); Big Snow American Dream (50 minutes)

Pass affiliations: None

Base elevation: 440 feet

Summit elevation: 1,480 feet

Vertical drop: 1,040 feet

Skiable Acres: 167

Average annual snowfall: 65 inches

Trail count: 46

Lift count: 9 (1 Cabriolet, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mountain Creek’s lift fleet)

About Big Snow American Dream

Located in: East Rutherford, New Jersey

Closest neighboring ski areas: Campgaw, New Jersey (35 minutes); National Winter Activity Center, New Jersey (45 minutes); Mountain Creek, New Jersey (50 minutes); Mount Peter, New York (50 minutes)

Pass affiliations: None

Vertical drop: 118 feet

Skiable Acres: 4

Average annual snowfall: 0 inches

Trail count: 4 (2 green, 1 blue, 1 black)

Lift count: 4 (1 quad, 1 poma, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog’s of inventory of Big Snow American Dream’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

Twenty-five years ago, Vail Resorts was known as “Vail Associates.” The company owned just two mountains: Vail and Beaver Creek, which are essentially right next door to each other in Eagle County, Colorado. The resorts were, as they are today, big, snowy, and fun. But they were not great businesses. Bankruptcy threatened. And the ski media – Skiing, Powder – was mostly dismissive. This was the dawn of the freeskiing era, and the cool kids were running the Circuit of Radness: Snowbird, Squaw, Mammoth, Jackson Hole, Whistler, the Powder Highway. Vail was for suburban dads from Michigan. Beaver Creek was for suburban dads from New York. If you wanted the good stuff, keep moving until you got to Crested Butte or Telluride. Vail was just another big Colorado ski resort, that happened to own another big Colorado ski resort, and that was it.

Today, Vail is the largest ski company in history, with (soon to be) 41 resorts scattered across three continents. Its Epic Pass transformed and stabilized the industry. It is impossible to talk about modern lift-served North American skiing without talking about Vail Resorts.

There was nothing inevitable about this. Pete Seibert, Vail’s founder, did not enter skiing with some snowy notion of Manifest Destiny. He just wanted to open a great ski resort. It was 18 years from Vail Mountain’s 1962 opening to the opening of Beaver Creek in 1980. It was nearly two more decades until Vail bought Keystone and Breck in 1997. It was 11 more years until the Epic Pass debuted, and a few more before anyone started to pay attention to it.

What Snow Partners, led by Joe Hession, is doing right now has echoes of Vail 15 years ago. They are building something. Quietly. Steadily. Like trees growing in a forest. They rise slowly but suddenly they tower over everything.

I’m not suggesting that Snow Partners will be the next Vail. That they will buy Revelstoke and Jackson Hole and Alta and launch the Ultimo Pass to compete with Epic and Ikon. What Snow Partners is building is different. Additive. It will likely be the best thing to ever happen to Vail or Alterra. Snow Partners is not digital cameras, here to crush Kodak. They are, rather, skiing’s Ben Franklin, who believed every community in America ...

Next Episode

Podcast #93: Perfect North Slopes, Indiana General Manager Jonathan M. Davis (with a Timberline, WV Bonus)

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on June 28. Free subscribers got it on July 1. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.

Who

Jonathan M. Davis, General Manager of Perfect North, Indiana

Recorded on

June 20, 2022

About Perfect North

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The Perfect Family

Pass affiliations: None

Located in: Lawrenceburg, Indiana

Closest neighboring ski areas: Mad River, Ohio (2 hours, 18 minutes); Paoli Peaks, Indiana (2 hours, 39 minutes); Snow Trails (3 hours)

Base elevation: 400 feet

Summit elevation: 800 feet

Vertical drop: 400 feet

Skiable Acres: 100

Average annual snowfall: 24 inches

Trail count: 22 (1 double-black, 3 black, 3 blue-black, 10 intermediate, 5 beginner)

Lift count: 12 (2 quads, 3 triples, 5 carpets, 2 ropetows - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Perfect North’s lift fleet)

About Timberline, West Virginia

While this podcast is not explicitly about Timberline, Jonathan had an important role in the ski area’s acquisition in 2019. His enthusiasm for Timberline is clear, the opportunity and the investment are enormous, and this conversation acts as a primer for what I hope will be a full Timberline podcast at some future point.

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The Perfect Family

Pass affiliations: None

Located in: Davis, West Virginia

Closest neighboring ski areas: Canaan Valley (8 minutes); White Grass XC touring/backcountry center (11 minutes); Wisp, Maryland (1 hour, 15 minutes); Snowshoe, West Virginia (1 hour, 50 minutes); Bryce, Virginia (2 hours); Homestead, Virginia (2 hours); Massanutten, Virginia (2 hours, 21 minutes)

Base elevation: 3,268 feet

Summit elevation: 4,268 feet

Vertical drop: 1,000 feet

Skiable Acres: 100

Average annual snowfall: 150 inches

Trail count: 20 (2 double-black, 3 black, 5 intermediate, 10 beginner)

Lift count: 3 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 fixed-grip quad, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Timberline’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

There are two kinds of ski areas in the Midwest. The first are the big ones, out there somewhere in the woods. Where 10,000 years ago a glacier got ornery. Or, farther back in time, little mountains hove up out of the earth. They’re at least 400 feet tall and top out near 1,000. They’re not near anything and they don’t need to be. People will drive to get there. Often they sit in a snowbelt, with glades and bumps and hidden parts. Multiple peaks. A big lodge at the bottom. There are perhaps two dozen of these in the entire region, all of them in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Boyne, Nub’s Nob, Crystal, Caberfae, Bohemia, Powderhorn, Whitecap, Granite Peak, Spirit, Lutsen. This is not a complete list. I’m making a point here.

The second kind of Midwest ski area is usually smaller. It claims 200 vertical feet and actually has 27. It has four chairlifts for every run. It has a parking lot that could swallow Lake George. It’s affordable. And it’s close. To something. Metro Detroit has four ski areas. Milwaukee has eight. Minneapolis has six. But pretty much any Lower Midwestern city of any size has at least one ski area in its orbit: Cleveland (Alpine Valley, Boston Mills, Brandywine), Columbus (Snow Trails, Mad River), St. Louis (Hidden Valley), Kansas City (Snow Creek), Des Moines (Seven Oaks), Chicago (Four Lakes, Villa Olivia), Omaha (Mt. Crescent).

For Cincinnati, that ski area is Perfect North. It’s actually one of the larger city-adjacent ski areas in the region: 400 vertical feet on 100 acres (accurate numbers, as far as I can tell). Twelve lifts. Twenty-two trails. Indiana has 6.7 million residents and two ski areas. Some winter days, approximately half of them are skiing at Perfect North.

I’m just kidding around about ...