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   Number 1: AMA 9/18/2026: No I Don’t Hate Vail, the Chairlift Apocalypse, Pass Strategies, & More

   The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is stocking up on canned corn ahead of the Robot Apocalypse. To support this worthy cause, please sign up for my skiing newsletter: Today’s episode answers questions from paid subscribers. I’m not including the Zoom transcript since I am the only one speaking, and the built-in transcript (click button above) will take you to any point in the audio when you click on the associated text block. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

   September 18, 2026·58min
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   Number 2: Storm News 9/17/2026: Caberfae Expansion, Indy to Ikon, Colorado Lift Ticket Deals

   The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is made in the USA. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism. About Caberfae Owned by: The Meyer Family Year founded: 1937 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 2 days, blackouts * Freedom Pass: 3 days, no blackouts Base elevation: 1,076 feet Summit elevation: 1,561 feet Vertical drop: 485 feet Skiable Acres: 200 Average annual snowfall: 120 inches Lift count: 5 (1 fixed-grip quad, 3 triples, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Caberfae’s lift fleet) The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, then click on any text block to teleport to the associated point in the video; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO; also since Tim and Pete were on one screen, the transcript does not differentiate between them). Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the storm. I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026, and we are going to mix things up a little bit today. Instead of starting with the takes, we are starting with the guests, and I have some great guests today. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:40.000 Stuart Winchester: They are the general managers of Cabrifay Peaks, Michigan, with over 200 acres of terrain served by 4 chairlifts across 3 peaks, with a 485-foot vertical drop. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabar Fay is one of the largest ski areas in Michigan’s Lower Penins. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 Stuart Winchester: The ski area averaged 120 inches of lake effect snowfall per winter. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Their family has operated Cabaret since 1980. They are co-general managers, with Tim Meyer on the right, handling everything on the mountain, and Pete Meyer on the left, taking care of everything off. Tim and Pete, welcome to the storm. I’m always hyped to talk Cabaret. How are you guys doing today? 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:11.000 Pete Meyer: Good. We’re doing awesome. Thanks for having us. Yeah. 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and trigger warning for any Sparties or Buckeyes out there who want to go to the video version on stormskiing.com or YouTube. Me and Tim are both proudly rocking our Wolverines gear. This is a shirt I wore to the maze out when Michigan blasted Oklahoma in the big house this past weekend. So we’re feeling. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Although I understand Tim’s also got a little Sparty, side loyalty. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:35.000 Pete Meyer: Yes, my children, both my sons are Spartans, so that’s… 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, as soon as my daughter got into college, I bought all the gear for her place. So, you know, there’s tons going on at Cabaret, and I want to start… 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:36.000 Pete Meyer: It. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:54.000 Stuart Winchester: with this coming expansion, and you, you announced this a while ago, and I’m gonna share my screen here so that everyone can see, uh, see this as we talk through it. 00:23:54.000 --> 00:24:13.000 Stuart Winchester: And this is where I am never quite as fast as I want to be. Uh, but… okay. So, here is the Cabra Fay trail map. This is the one I took off your website this morning, so it’s the most current that I have. Uh, and last time I talked to Tim in, I think, 2021, when you came on the podcast. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it… 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:31.000 Stuart Winchester: This East Peak triple chair was still still in a theory phase and you hadn’t built yet. Now that’s in place and we’ll talk about that in a minute and how that’s gone. But talk to us about the Green Mountain triple chair, what we’re getting and why you’re building it. 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:34.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, so, um… 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.000 Pete Meyer: I’m going to start with why, because it’s kind of an interesting story, you know. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:51.000 Pete Meyer: we… when we put in the East Peak lift, we took out the shelter chairlift, the double. They started in almost the same place, but the shelter… the shelter lift. 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.000 Pete Meyer: let off about halfway up the hill. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:04.000 Pete Meyer: And because we we have our dads before us and then and then we also have continued to develop the terrain. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:13.000 Pete Meyer: the terrain changes and the flow changes. And what happened over time, like, especially over the last. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:16.000 Pete Meyer: 25 years or so. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:23.000 Pete Meyer: we kept adding on to Smiling Irishman and making it wider and wider and wider, and it got busier and busier and busier, so… 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:29.000 Pete Meyer: The shelter chairlift was essentially letting off these new skiers. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:33.000 Pete Meyer: in the middle of flowing traffic. And… 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:37.000 Pete Meyer: We thought when we put in the East Peak lift. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:41.000 Pete Meyer: Now we’re gonna take these lower end skiers to the top. 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:55.000 Pete Meyer: we’re going to give them a longer run, and the new part we’re giving them is actually the easier half. They’re already negotiating the tougher half, the steeper half, and the narrower half. If we add the upper half, it’s easier, it’s wider, it should be fine. 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:06.000 Pete Meyer: And that’s what we thought. And so we put it in and then but then what we found and this is the this is the piece that you learn as you go. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.000 Pete Meyer: is… 00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:15.000 Pete Meyer: The new skiers accepted being let off at the lower level, and having to merge into traffic, because. 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Pete Meyer: They didn’t really know any different and that it was the psychological factor. Well, I’m only halfway up the mountain. I can, I can do this. When we took them up to the top, you know, that East Peak lift actually feels like a out, it almost feels like an out West lift. It has. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:43.000 Pete Meyer: like, three rises, you know? So you ride… you go up over a break, and then you… and then you go again for a while, and then up over another break, and then you’re coming into the top, and you… you know, you’re above… 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:47.000 Pete Meyer: Tree line, basically, and you can see the horizon, and it just… 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Pete Meyer: would kind of psych out that new skier, you know, they would just, they would. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.000 Pete Meyer: They’d get up there and kind of freeze and panic, and… 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:06.000 Pete Meyer: say, there’s no way I’m gonna go down, you know, I’m not gonna go down that hill. And, uh, so we found our ski patrol having to give a lot of lessons just to get people down the hill, and… 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:13.000 Pete Meyer: And, um, and so we, we just, we kind of knew that we had a, you know, a little bit of an issue that we had to work through. 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:21.000 Pete Meyer: And so Pete and I would be talking, you know, and I would say, I think I have it all figured out, you know, I’m saying, um… 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:34.000 Pete Meyer: we just need to give them… make sure that all the… every single new skier gets a lesson, and we get them ready to… you know, we get them ready to go. And a lot of the… a lot of this is the school groups, you know, the different groups, and we do offer lessons. 00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000 Pete Meyer: to everybody, but sometimes they don’t take them, and, you know, they slide, they slide through, and… 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:42.000 Pete Meyer: And so. 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:50.000 Pete Meyer: Pete and I were having a meeting on Green Mountain with our ski patrol director, Katie, and Dennis, one of our top instructors. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:59.000 Pete Meyer: And we think we have it all figured out. You know, we’re just we just need to put them through a lesson and then and then problem solved. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:00.000 Pete Meyer: And… 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:12.000 Pete Meyer: And Dennis, our ski instructor, was like, almost grabbed right onto my jacket. He’s like, you don’t understand. I can’t get them ready for East Peak on this. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:23.000 Pete Meyer: we need something in between, and I… and… and so it’s like, oh, oh, well, what do you need, Dennis? And he pointed up at the Green Mountain, and he said, we need that. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:41.000 Pete Meyer: And I… I said, well, I think we have a plan for that on a cocktail napkin somewhere. We could go look at that again. So basically, what… what hap… what it was is we… we had always had this. We… we actually had lift lines staked out, and we hadn’t been looking at doing this. We just thought it would be… 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:51.000 Pete Meyer: the last thing that we do. We thought we would… we would continue to develop into the… into the backcountry area, and then do the Green Mountain expansion later. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:06.000 Pete Meyer: But what the… what the customer told us was, no, you need the Green Mountain expansion now. So that’s the why and the how, that all of a sudden that thing kind of appeared out of nowhere, and why it was a two… 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:14.000 Pete Meyer: why it’s a two-year construction, because there’s nothing over there. No services. Um, so we’ve had… we had to… 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:18.000 Pete Meyer: You know, we had to do the final planning kind of fast. 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:30.000 Pete Meyer: so we wanted to take 2 years to do it. Um, and so what are you getting? You’re getting about 135 vertical feet, a brand new Doppelmayr triple. 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:38.000 Pete Meyer: uh, that’s just like East Peak and just like Vista, so it’s gonna show this, you know, it’s gonna take the new skier, um. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:43.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, and get them going on a lift that’s similar to what we have throughout the area. 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:55.000 Pete Meyer: it runs a little bit slower, has a bigger chair spacing, so it’s going to be a little bit easier to load and unload. And when it’s all built out, we should have 4 or 5. 00:29:55.000 --> 00:30:00.000 Pete Meyer: really, uh, easy trails, but with character. I mean, these aren’t just… 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:14.000 Pete Meyer: you know, a football field at 10 degrees that doesn’t have any character. These are, you know, tree-lined, um, interesting slopes. Uh, the lift itself actually goes through the woods. 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:20.000 Pete Meyer: and part of the way, and it’s just a really neat development. So we think that. 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:32.000 Pete Meyer: You know, even though it’s not big vertical, it lifts about a thousand feet long. The terrain has really good character and we think it’s going to be really popular. 00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:47.000 Stuart Winchester: I’ve always loved that about Cabaret. My favorite section of Cabaret for the folks who are watching is this sort of lower section where all the trails split off. And I’ve always found it a little confusing and fun. And I like confusing. I like it. I feel like it makes ski areas feel bigger than they are. 00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:59.000 Stuart Winchester: I want to zoom out a little bit and connect this expansion to some larger ski industry narratives, because the narrative that won’t die is that the big corporate consolidation and big passes are killing the independents. 00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:15.000 Stuart Winchester: here I’m looking at Cabra Fay, family-owned for the last 46 years, and in 2016, you put in a brand new triple chair right here on North Peak. In 2022, you put in the brand new East Peak triple chair, and then you’re putting in this brand new Green Mountain triple chair next year, at least that’s the plan. I mean… 00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:31.000 Stuart Winchester: So you’re affording three new chairlifts. Uh, you know, Monarch was willing to tell me out in Colorado. Yeah, we, and we paid cash for them. I don’t know if you, if you have, you know, theories on debt. I know a lot of scare operators like Platykill in New York, like to stay out of debt, but, but how did Cab. 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:40.000 Stuart Winchester: How is Calgary managing all these capital upgrades, and what does it say, do you think, about independents competing in 2026? 00:31:41.000 --> 00:32:05.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, I don’t have access to the checkbook, so you have to let me answer that one. No, that’s a great question, Stu. And Tim kind of hit on this on his first podcast with you, but when Tim and I got moved back here in 2001, we had what I call like soul crushing debt. You know, it was just crippling, like every dollar we made had to go and service the debt. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:08.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, we didn’t have… 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:18.000 Pete Meyer: really any money to even make capital improvements or to do much of anything. So our our main mission early on was try to try to get out of debt and get out of that hole. 00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:35.000 Pete Meyer: And, you know, our dad’s done a nice job developing and building, and they got it out of bankruptcy. So when you get something out of bankruptcy, they’ve already cut every corner and done all kinds of deferred maintenance, pushed it all off. So we had quite a bit to deal with, and it was a long… 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:36.000 Pete Meyer: Um… 00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:46.000 Pete Meyer: the long slugfest. Tim and I call those the dark days, you know, about 10 years of just really grinding. And then, finally, right, you know. 00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:58.000 Pete Meyer: about 2015, we were able to, uh, to get out of debt, and then… and then we started to, um, really put capital back into it, and that’s why we decided on… on… 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:02.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, putting in some new chairlifts, and yes, we have not gone back into debt since. 00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:14.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s fantastic, and as you think to the future, okay, you have this North Peak quad chair, built in, I think, 92, and then you have the South Peak triple, which I think early 80s lift, it’s a riblet, which… 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:29.000 Stuart Winchester: As you know, is out of business now. I think this one’s a SeaTac. So, I don’t know if when, you know, you give a really good summary, Tim, of how East Peak changed traffic around the mountain. Uh, I, I’ve seen a, there’s a ton of comments. I was just scrolling through, through Lyft blog for the folks watching. 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:41.000 Stuart Winchester: to show Peter’s excellent pictures of that lift. And the Cabaret page on there has a ton of comments, and I’m sure you’ve seen them. So, there’s a lot of wondering, it seems, among skiers. 00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Why the quad is still here, because it… 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:57.000 Stuart Winchester: they don’t seem to think it runs a lot, and they think the triple does the job. Is there any thought of moving the quad, or do you really need 7 seats here? Or, just thinking long-term, what does the lift distribution look like across Cabaret Fay as you look at this map? 00:33:57.000 --> 00:34:13.000 Pete Meyer: Well, I think that we do need the quad on the busiest days, right? Otherwise, the reason we put the Vista Triple in there is the lines on the quad used to get so long. And it was like, that’s the artery. I mean, you know, more people. 00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.000 Pete Meyer: go through the North Peak complex. 00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:34.000 Pete Meyer: every day than than the others, you know, because it’s the middle. And so it’s you go through there on your way to and from South Peak, and a lot of people just ski there because it’s really really good inter advanced, intermediate and intermediate type terrain, and even some advanced beginner terrain. So it. 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:43.000 Pete Meyer: It services a wide range of abilities. So I think you want to have the two lifts. 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:45.000 Pete Meyer: Um… 00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:58.000 Pete Meyer: I think ultimately, though, we want to have more places for people to go, more pods of skiing, so that actually you do run the quad less and less, but you have it there so that on the really busy days. 00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:14.000 Pete Meyer: you can turn it on and have, you know, a lift that doesn’t have a line that somebody can sit on and ride up. But, um, I don’t know if that answers the question. Yeah, right now, Stu, we run it 3 days a week, Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays, the busier days, and so… 00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:24.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, we don’t run it, uh, Monday through Thursday, just because it’s a redundant lift, and we don’t need the uphill capacity, um, is… is why people say it’s not running some of the time. 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I guess what I was getting at is, is there a world where you move the quad over here to serve some of this backcountry terrain and in the top of Green Mountain? As it’s, as there’s kind of open space on the trail map and, and knowing Gary Milken, how he designs maps, he sometimes leaves that space. 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:57.000 Stuart Winchester: for expansion. So, so what’s the thought around, you know, and you alluded to it earlier when you were thinking about a lift for backcountry, and Tim, you had mentioned even maybe reviving those halls. I don’t know if that’s still a possibility. I don’t know if they’re still sitting at the bottom of the mountain here, but what’s the thought on. 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:02.000 Stuart Winchester: potential expansion over in this area or lifts in this area long term. 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:17.000 Pete Meyer: I think that would be the next frontier. So, somewhere in the bottom… because you’ve skied here, Stu, you know if you go through the backcountry, you run out of gas, and then you have… and then you have to walk, and that’s why we call it backcountry, because it’s a… 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:27.000 Pete Meyer: Because it’s a tearful experience for many people coming out of there in the flats. And so somewhere down in that basin. 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:40.000 Pete Meyer: there could, there could be a lift someday that goes up to east of the top of East Peak. And Stu, what Tim had alluded to earlier in his first answer is that that was our original plan, so that would have been. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:34.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:58.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, that was the plan to be our next chairlift, was to service that area. But due to the reaction and the response of our skiers, you know, we deviated and focused on… and moved to Green Mountain. Um, and, you know, one thing we found is that transition from the magic carpet, right there on the trail map, you can see, to the East Peak chair. 00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:36:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:15.000 Pete Meyer: was just too much for most of our skiers. And not only were we not doing Cabaret any favors, but we’re not doing the industry any favors. You know, it’s just, it was asking them to do too much, too big of a, make too much of a jump. So by putting in this East Peak. 00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:30.000 Pete Meyer: chair, and then we’ll have all green runs that’ll all be, um, varying degrees of difficulty of a green run, but all of them will be in between the Magic Carpet slope and the Smiling Irishman slope, so it’ll be a really nice. 00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:43.000 Pete Meyer: transition, and quite frankly, we think a lot of school groups and a lot of skiers are going to come out, um, and never get off that chair, and stay on Green Mountain all day, and have a wildly successful day, and want to return, um, to not only Cabaret Fay, but to other ski. 00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:48.000 Stuart Winchester: I love it, and I can confidently say, because I ski all over, uh, that Cabaret is now… 00:37:48.000 --> 00:38:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And, and especially once you put in this new lift, it’s one of the most modern up to date ski areas in the entire region. And, and that wasn’t always true. When I first skied at Cabaret in the nineties, it was a lot of haul double chairs. I mean, these, these guys were over here, the, the quad and the, and the triple, but. 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:11.000 Stuart Winchester: that, that throwback feel to it. And I know, Tim, when you were on last time, uh, you, you talked, you lamented a little bit. 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:23.000 Stuart Winchester: getting rid of the last rope toe for the carpet, and just sort of the emotion of it, even though you knew it was logically the right thing. What if you could bring back a little throwback by putting a little rope toe right here to bring people out of the backcountry? 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.000 Pete Meyer: Well, you know, it’s funny, I… 00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:36.000 Pete Meyer: I was kind of slow to warm up to getting rid of that rope toe. I guess, you know, I always had that old school… 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:52.000 Pete Meyer: you know, I learned on a rope toe, my kids learned on a rope toe, your kids are going to learn on a rope toe, which is just backwards thinking, right, for a for a ski area manager to have that kind of thought process. I’m not sure. I know where you’re going. I mean, no one knows what the future holds. 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:38:52.000 --> 00:39:09.000 Pete Meyer: I do see ski areas having a lot of success with train parks with fast tows that service them. Again, another cocktail napkin plan that we have that we’re not going to get into in this interview is something like that on our property down the road. 00:38:58.000 --> 00:38:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:16.000 Pete Meyer: Um, so there, you know, I could see that kind of a thing, but, um… 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:26.000 Pete Meyer: And… but I think… I don’t know if we would ever want to put a surface tow out of the backcountry area unless, for some reason, we weren’t going to lift serve it. 00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Got it. 00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:31.000 Pete Meyer: But, you know, I guess, you know, no one knows for sure. 00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:37.000 Pete Meyer: Um, but I wanna… I wanna back up on the Green Mountain expansion a little bit, if… if you’ll let me. 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Sure. 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, do it. Let’s do it. 00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:44.000 Pete Meyer: When we were at the Midwest, uh, show this year, there was a, there was a fireside chat, and we were talking about. 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:54.000 Pete Meyer: We’re talking about, you know, turning first-time skiers into second-time skiers, and making the experience the best it can be. 00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:06.000 Pete Meyer: And so that we have… we have success in that arena. And the Green Mountain… the Green Mountain is… is really a missing piece, because you’re looking at our trail map, and you see how the parking lot is laid out. 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:07.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:12.000 Pete Meyer: Um, so if you’re, you know, trying to make it as easy as possible for somebody who’s never skied before. 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:17.000 Pete Meyer: You can park on pavement right in front of our ticket office. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:24.000 Pete Meyer: Get out of your car, walk a short distance on heated sidewalks to the ticket office. 00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:36.000 Pete Meyer: Get… pay for everything you need. Pay for your skis, pay for your ticket, pay for your rentals, pay for your lesson, and then walk up to the… walk up to the, um… 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:37.000 Pete Meyer: Rental. 00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:52.000 Pete Meyer: In your, in your regular boots, so it’s easy walking, go inside, take your stuff off, take your boots off, get your boots, get your skis and come and then, and then secure your lesson at the end and then walk out the door. 00:40:52.000 --> 00:41:09.000 Pete Meyer: And you’re 30, you know, you’re 30 feet from where the ski school meets and you’re right at the bottom of the conveyor. So it’s really easy to start out and we can get you going on the conveyor. We can virtually get anybody that can stand up on skis or snowboard up to the top. 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:13.000 Pete Meyer: And then put, you know, all their energy into getting them down the hill. 00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:28.000 Pete Meyer: And then once you outgrow that, you just get off the conveyor and you ski down a little slope right onto the East Peak lift. Or, I’m sorry, onto the Green Mountain lift. So now you’re right there, and you have this real easy area. 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:37.000 Pete Meyer: to learn to ski, and then when you, when you’re ready, you just ski down, just ski down the hill to the east peak lift. So the, the flow. 00:41:37.000 --> 00:41:42.000 Pete Meyer: for that never ever in the in the ah, the the. 00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:51.000 Pete Meyer: possibility of getting them to come a second and third and fourth time is really real, and I think… I think we’re in, like, a new stratosphere for getting… 00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:59.000 Pete Meyer: you know, getting people, uh, skiing. And then as it flows, you know, the next step, the next place to ski is East Peak. 00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:10.000 Pete Meyer: And then as you get a little more daring, you work your way into the North Peak complex, and then eventually over to South Peak. So the flow is really natural, and I think it’s going to work out extremely well. 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:21.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it’s like a mini, uh, Copper Mountain. I know you’re a Winter Park guy, but it, you know, the, the, the viability… You know what, the exciting thing, I think, for skiers who are not novices, who know Cabaret Faye well. 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah. 00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:38.000 Stuart Winchester: starts to creep back into old Caber Fay. And, and when we’ve talked a while ago, Tim, I, I didn’t have a good perspective, but some new maps have popped up on ski map.org, which is my go to for old trail maps. And this one I think shows the old terrain really well. So here’s the road looping around, here’s the parking lot. 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And then here’s all the terrain. And so I… Google Earth also makes it really easy. So as I go here… 00:42:47.000 --> 00:43:02.000 Stuart Winchester: I am, for those who are watching, I am zooming in on… so this is what you were talking about, you kind of just park on pavement, you get out here, for those watching on YouTube or StormSkiing.com, the carpet’s right around here, and then this will be green, is that right? 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:07.000 Pete Meyer: No, if you go, if you, if you go back to that old, old trail map, like you can see right to there, there’s a. 00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:14.000 Pete Meyer: A rope toe — there’s two rope toes right there, right up that line, top of that peak. There was two rope toes. 00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Right there? Okay. 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:19.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, heading up that way, and another rope tow coming out at 90 degrees from… from the top. 00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:37.000 Pete Meyer: And that shack still is up there to this day. It’s a two-story tow shack where we had three different rope tows coming in. So it’s going to come right up to the top of that. And that area was always called practice area. That was the old name of it. So if you look at old trail maps, you’ll see that word practice area. 00:43:23.000 --> 00:43:24.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s cool. 00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:41.000 Pete Meyer: It’s a great name for a learn to ski area. 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, here’s another map, the 1971 map has it as practice area. Okay, so I was assuming that you were digging that up, but I guess you’re taking earth from there for the other… is that where you took it for East Peak? Is that what this big sandpit is? 00:43:53.000 --> 00:44:07.000 Pete Meyer: Oh, that’s more of the West Ridge area out into that area. So we’re actually off to the left. It’s all still green. Up into there, yeah, so it’ll be a nice natural hilltop with big mature trees, tree line runs. It’s gonna be really, it’s gonna be really nice. 00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:18.000 Stuart Winchester: So as you… so you can see, for those watching, this is old cab buffet. These are… this is all abandoned, right? I… do you still own this? I mean, it… because once you put the lift up here. 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:37.000 Stuart Winchester: It seems like it could potentially open some of this backside terrain. I know people would love that. It also makes you very big. I don’t know if that’s on your radar as Cabaret continues to grow and succeed, but what are the thoughts on this really cool abandoned terrain that you have back here? And Tim, I know we talked about this a few years ago, but I also know that thoughts evolve over time. 00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:44.000 Pete Meyer: So we do still own all of that. So that area you’re looking at, we do own it. 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:55.000 Pete Meyer: I think that we don’t have any plans to go back into that area at this time, but you never know. 00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:52.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:44:55.000 --> 00:45:04.000 Pete Meyer: Going back, though, a little bit, we don’t want to get too far into the weeds. Unless you want to get into the weeds, we can go. Um, I brought my machete, so we can… 00:45:03.000 --> 00:45:06.000 Stuart Winchester: I live in the weeds, man, that’s, uh, my… 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:22.000 Pete Meyer: we can do what we need to do. But when… way back, going way back to 1982, 83, when South Peak opened, you know, South Peak was redeveloped, all that… a lot of that terrain was still running back then. We were riding T-bars and rope tows on the North Ridge, and West Ridge was alive, and. 00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yes. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:21.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:31.000 Pete Meyer: The practice area tow was still running. So I remember that stuff, you know, as a kid, all happening. And when South Peak was built. 00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:43.000 Pete Meyer: it was so much bigger than all that, you know, vertical-wise. It was, like, twice, you know, twice the vertical, um, real snowmaking, real grooming. 00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:56.000 Pete Meyer: people just abandoned the back… the back hills. They just went… they left that. They left that area, and they went to Salt Peak. And that’s really why it all closed, is people just stopped going back there. It just wasn’t as good. So… 00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Or did they? 00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:00.000 Pete Meyer: I often think maybe it just is better to be a memory. 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:05.000 Pete Meyer: But but who knows? You know, down the road it could be what it could be. 00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think between opening the backcountry and that, uh, the Green Mountain expansion, I think you excited some folks. Alright, that, that’s, uh, that’s, that’s all really cool. I appreciate you taking me inside that. Let’s talk passes now, and I’m. 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:19.000 Stuart Winchester: the screen share here. So, uh… 00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabrefe joined IndyPass as an inaugural member in 2019, and has been on that pass every season since, for the 2026-27 season. Cabrefe has, and I’m just laying this out for the listeners, uh, Cabrefe has departed the IndyPass and has joined. 00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:51.000 Stuart Winchester: The full icon pass, uh, on their two day tier, which is only on the full icon pass, not on the icon base, there’s no access, and there’s also holiday blackout, so the only mountains that are holiday blacked out on the full icon are the, the two day mountains, of which. 00:46:51.000 --> 00:46:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabaret is now one. So, so talk us through. 00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:03.000 Stuart Winchester: your experience with IndiePass and the decision, ultimately, to leave that partnership and to join up with ICON. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:09.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, sure, Stu, we have a feeling this might be a topic of conversation today, so… 00:47:07.000 --> 00:47:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:47:09.000 --> 00:47:11.000 Pete Meyer: So we. 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:11.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:22.000 Pete Meyer: There’s a lot of layers to this answer, and this decision was not made quickly or lightly, and a lot of analysis and discussion went into it. 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:37.000 Pete Meyer: To be quite honest, we were… we’ve been frustrated with the IndyPass a little bit for a couple years, and we kind of… we kind of laid out a bunch of, um, the pros and cons list, and the cons list was a lot longer than the pros, and so we… we ultimately kind of came to this decision to exit, and um… 00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:53.000 Pete Meyer: We’re going to talk about — I’ll talk about a couple of those reasons now. But before I do, I think it’s important to provide some history and some context with Cadbury and IndyPass. So as you mentioned, Indy launched in 2019. We were an early adopter. We had some great conversations with Doug Fish that summer. 00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:47:53.000 --> 00:48:10.000 Pete Meyer: Doug worked really hard to get this pass going. We really enjoyed our conversations. He kind of could answer the questions that nobody could answer. He knew things that nobody else knew. And I still remember to this day, I’m like, Doug, how do you know all this? And he’s like in his raspy voice. 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:21.000 Pete Meyer: I just know, you know, so it’s like, it was kind of cool. So we had confidence that, uh, that he could implement this pass and make it successful, um, because he knew what it took. So we… 00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:26.000 Stuart Winchester: I’m sorry to interrupt. I may have been the first ever Cabaret Redemption on the Indie Pass since November 2019. 00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:25.000 Pete Meyer: You know what? That’s this. 00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:30.000 Pete Meyer: It wasn’t, it was December 5th, 2019. 00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. It… 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:39.000 Pete Meyer: So, I was gonna get into that in a little bit, but now I’ll hit on that. So then, um, in digging through all these redemptions, which I was gonna get into. 00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:34.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, okay, go ahead. 00:48:37.000 --> 00:48:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Sorry, I spoiled it. 00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:56.000 Pete Meyer: And pouring this data, I was like, Stuart Winchester, you were redemption number one for us. I don’t know if you knew that. And I remember it to this day because I never heard your name. I never heard of your podcast. I don’t even know if you had it going then. 00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:42.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Wow, that’s cool. 00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Yah. 00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.000 Stuart Winchester: It launched, uh, that October, so it was brand new. Mm-hmm. 00:48:57.000 --> 00:48:59.000 Pete Meyer: That October? Okay. 00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:14.000 Pete Meyer: So the… our… my office is right behind the ticket window, and the ticket teller… our office… the ticket manager wasn’t in there, so the ticket teller came and got me when he came to the window. I have this, uh, IndiePass, I don’t know what to do with it. So I was showing her how to… 00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:18.000 Pete Meyer: redeem it in in Brooklyn. 00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:43.000 Pete Meyer: New York pops up. Oh, I got to talk to this guy. I go, you mean that you drove all the way here just to ski at Cabra Faith in Brooklyn, New York? And you’re like, yeah, I did. And I thought, I’m like, this pass is awesome, right? It’s great, guys. But then we talked a little bit more and you said you had family in the area and we’re in the area for a while. So I was really high for a long time on the UniPass because of that. But I didn’t know it was you until I was digging through the data. I’m like, oh, that’s. 00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so. 00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, that’s cool. 00:49:43.000 --> 00:49:58.000 Pete Meyer: That’s that’s so. So anyways, anyways, we’ll where was I? So okay, so then we were the first as part of that. Then we were the 1st ski resort in the Lower Peninsula to to commit to the to Indy Pass, and I’m not sure about. 00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Love that. 00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:01.000 Pete Meyer: Um, the UP, uh. 00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:16.000 Pete Meyer: But the only one in the Lower Peninsula. And so we knew at that time, well, this isn’t going to do anything unless we get a couple more ski resorts to join. So we had reached out to a few. And Pete Bigford was interested. And he was the CEO and president of Shanty Creek at the time. 00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:30.000 Pete Meyer: And Pete had said, yeah, we’ll do it, but we need a couple of downstate resorts to join as well. So then we reached out to Jamie at Swiss Valley, she said yes, and Doug at Cannonsburg, and he said yes. So that first year, we had four. 00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:33.000 Pete Meyer: Um, resorts on the Indy Pass. And… 00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:45.000 Pete Meyer: During that time he that 1st year he charged resorts a thousand dollars to get in. So we we had conversations. We’re like, well, let’s let’s try it. The worst we can do is be out a thousand dollars right? So we had these. 00:50:45.000 --> 00:51:00.000 Pete Meyer: 4 ski areas in, and we did… I think we did 44 redemptions that first year. It was… it was virtually nothing. I don’t even think it covered the… the $1,000. It might have come… but… but we liked the concept, it was neat, and the word got out, and then… and then Crystal Mountain joined, um, the next year. 00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow. Okay. 00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:06.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, and then, so we kind of hit a critical mass there, and then it was a really good pass, um. 00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:16.000 Pete Meyer: for a long time, for a while, for several years. And one thing that Doug had said, and during that first year, I think in 2019, they had about 50. 00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:32.000 Pete Meyer: ski resorts on the pass, if I remember. And he said, I really hope to get it to 80 to maybe 100 passes. Um, and you as an early adopter, um, Cabaret will have say who gets in, in, in your particular region, because I really want to keep it, do just a couple ski resorts per region. 00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:37.000 Pete Meyer: not to not to oversaturate the market. Like, yeah, great. This sounds sounds really good. 00:51:37.000 --> 00:51:40.000 Pete Meyer: So then as we go on, um… 00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:50.000 Pete Meyer: he sells the pass to, uh, Entebani and Eric. Um, and great for Doug, we’re happy for Doug, he worked really hard to make that pass, good for him for selling it. Um, can’t fault him. 00:51:50.000 --> 00:52:05.000 Pete Meyer: Um, and then we like to say, like, Eric, Eric took the pass and put it on steroids. You know, it’s just, he, he’s, he’s done a wonderful job with it. You know, he’s obviously very, very intelligent, very successful, running three different businesses, um, um, and doing well at all of them. 00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.000 Pete Meyer: But he’s blown it up. He just had a different mission. 00:52:09.000 --> 00:52:13.000 Pete Meyer: than than Doug had. Right? So what did that evolve into? 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Blowing it up, you mean making bigger, right? 00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:22.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, making it bigger. Like, Doug was gonna keep it small and couple to each region, and we were gonna have an input on, you know. 00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:35.000 Pete Meyer: to try to prevent it from being oversaturated. So, I know the Midwest has a lot of ski areas on the pass, but, like, our world is Michigan and our, more specifically, northern Michigan. 00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:38.000 Pete Meyer: So it got down to where we had 6. 00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:56.000 Pete Meyer: um, ski resorts within a 60-mile radius in northern Michigan, right? So if you drop a pin, you can drive within, within 60 miles, you can get to six resorts on it. Um, that density just became too much for us, because that’s 12 visits, right? If a skier buys an Andy Pass, they can ski 12 times, two at each place. It’s great for them, they get a lot of. 00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:52:57.000 --> 00:53:12.000 Pete Meyer: Um, the problem is, is what we’re seeing, and we’re watching the numbers every year, um, and it was easy to do because there’s not a ton of redemptions, but how many of those people were former Passovers, right? And that percentage kept rising every year. 00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmm. 00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:25.000 Pete Meyer: So what it became and evolved into is just a direct competitor of our own season pass product. And that’s ultimately reason number one why we — it just oversaturated. 00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:26.000 Pete Meyer: And. 00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.000 Stuart Winchester: So, go ahead. 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:28.000 Pete Meyer: And, you know, so… 00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:34.000 Pete Meyer: I and I think the the Indy Pass really for a lot of ski resorts. 00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:51.000 Pete Meyer: doesn’t move the needle a ton, um, financially. Uh, for… for us, it really didn’t, and I felt like we were… did a reasonable number of redemptions, so we could… we could take it… take it or leave it. It doesn’t have a big impact. It affects the customer more. Like, that decision was hard, the person who bought it in the past. 00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:56.000 Pete Meyer: Um, but I think Eric’s a stand-up guy. He’ll let anybody who… 00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:07.000 Pete Meyer: who bought an E-Pass, and their favorite resort is not on that, they’ll give a refund to anybody who wants one. So the Cabaret listeners know that, and I think that’s nice of him to do. Also, for those. 00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:19.000 Pete Meyer: um, Cabaret, uh, listeners who bought an Indy add-on. He’ll honor that for this year, from what I understand. So, it’s a couple of really good things that he’s doing there, so we’re thankful, thankful for that. But, um. 00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:28.000 Pete Meyer: through conversations, and we just decided it was time to get out. So that’s reason number one. I got a couple more reasons if you’ve got time. 00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Well, let’s linger on that for a second. I mean, for me, it just comes down to good old-fashioned free market competition, right? Where there’s another pass available that is looking for smaller mountains like Caber Fay. It also signed mountains like Buck Hill and. 00:54:41.000 --> 00:54:58.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and uh… Wild Mountain over in Minnesota, just small areas near populations that are popular. I saw you catching some heat in comments to me, you know, on my platforms and social media, because you go from the Indy Pass, which maxed out at $419. 00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:16.000 Stuart Winchester: to the full Icon, which is $1,449 right now, and I know you can upgrade and buy a discounted Icon session pass, but I don’t want to overstate it. What’s the reaction been like from your pass holders, and how have you handled that? 00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:24.000 Stuart Winchester: The fact that you’re no longer available on the cheap discounted pass, multi-mountain pass, but you are available on the very expensive one. 00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:27.000 Pete Meyer: Great question, great question, because we’ve been getting… 00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:42.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, we’ve been getting both, uh, good and, and bad feedback from it. So, what, what it comes down to is the, is the decision to, to, uh, leave Indy and, and join OCCON. Those, those decisions were, were mutually exclusive. Like, like, we had made the decision to. 00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:52.000 Pete Meyer: to leave Indy, um, before we even started to Icon. And we had a lot of conversations of, hey, let’s just… let’s just be… let’s just be independent and not on any… any, uh… 00:55:52.000 --> 00:56:08.000 Pete Meyer: Multi resort pass, you know, there’s a lot of really successful and really nice ski resorts that have that model, like Perfect North Slopes, Cascade in Wisconsin. We always go out and ski somewhere every spring and I went out to the Tahoe area this year and skied at Mount Rose, you know, that place is. 00:55:58.000 --> 00:55:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:56:01.000 --> 00:56:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:18.000 Pete Meyer: that place is phenomenal. They’re not on any, any, um, any pants. And, um, it was neat to ski there, and just see they had a similar vibe and feel that, um, Cabaret had, right? 00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:11.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. That’s right. 00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:23.000 Pete Meyer: So quite a bit more, quite a bit more. Yeah, yeah. 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:21.000 Stuart Winchester: Just a little more elevation. 00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:24.000 Stuart Winchester: They’re at, like, 9,000 feet. 00:56:23.000 --> 00:56:27.000 Pete Meyer: Absolutely, but it was great terrain. So. 00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:27.000 --> 00:56:29.000 Pete Meyer: After we left the Indy Pass. 00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:31.000 Pete Meyer: Then we, um… 00:56:31.000 --> 00:56:46.000 Pete Meyer: Started talking to the folks at ICON, and I want to give a shout out to Aaron Keene and Caitlin Windauer, those girls are really sharp and would answer all the questions. It kind of reminded me of the early DuckFish days where they were all knowing and knew a lot of answers to everything. 00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:53.000 Pete Meyer: We talked to them for a long time. We weren’t in any rush to make a decision to go down this road. 00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:57.000 Pete Meyer: And you know what ultimately decided for us is. 00:56:57.000 --> 00:57:10.000 Pete Meyer: We want to do what’s best for our core customer, and our core customer is our season pass holder, okay? And this IndyPass or this IconPass brought on this reciprocal benefit of a three-day. 00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:27.000 Pete Meyer: 3 day session pass you can get for 50% off. Right? And that adds a lot of value. To our pass holders. And so we’ve been hit as much as the negativity that you’ve seen online for leaving any pass, we’ve been getting messages from our pass holders saying, hey, thank you for this benefit. This is great. 00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:13.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s. 00:57:13.000 --> 00:57:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, three day. Yeah. Okay. 00:57:18.000 --> 00:57:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:57:27.000 --> 00:57:43.000 Pete Meyer: I’m gonna use it. I’m gonna take a trip. And then we’ve known we’ve gone out west together and 3 days of skiing is plenty. Like we like to ski bell to bell and it’s you’re by that 3rd day you’re waking up and you’re like you can’t even move your legs for you know we’re so so we think it’s a nice. 00:57:29.000 --> 00:57:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, yeah. 00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:57:43.000 --> 00:57:55.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, you can ski locally here, you can head up in, um, hit up, hit up both Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands, or drive over to, uh, Blue Mountain, Ontario, so you don’t have to get in a plane. So it’s. 00:57:55.000 --> 00:58:11.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, of our pass holders. Cause we know, we know, Stuart, that nobody’s going to buy a full icon pass for two days at Cabaret. We, we know that that wasn’t even the, like Pete said, we’re, we do like our independence and, and. 00:57:57.000 --> 00:57:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:58:03.000 --> 00:58:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:58:11.000 --> 00:58:25.000 Pete Meyer: And we like to create these partnerships that are good for our core customers. The people that commit to us, we’re going to give you the best we can. And so, you know, that that three day session pass is just it’s it’s. 00:58:25.000 --> 00:58:29.000 Pete Meyer: It’s a it’s a great benefit for our core customers. 00:58:29.000 --> 00:58:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it’s like you take a trip to Steamboat, or Palisades Tahoe, or a lot of the mountains that are on that. So, you know, it all makes sense, and I like the, you know, Boyne, Cabaret, sort of on one team, and then you have Nubs, and Crystal, and Treetops, and Shani on the other. I think that’s good for skiers, it’s good for. 00:58:47.000 --> 00:59:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, two more, two more things I wanna talk about and then we’ll get out of here. Uh, I, I really wanna talk about your season pass. $299 unlimited. I think it was even a little cheaper for early birds, but that’s what it is right now. Uh, 219 for weekday, 129 for Sunday. That, that’s an awesome, awesome deal. 00:59:03.000 --> 00:59:18.000 Stuart Winchester: by any measure. I noticed you no longer have the Saturday-Sunday pass, and I think it’s been a couple years, and it also… Saturday lift tickets are more than Sunday, so it seems as though, from my point of view, you’re really trying to manage the experience on Saturday. So, talk about your season pass suite. 00:59:18.000 --> 00:59:27.000 Stuart Winchester: And how that relates to your mountain management as far as making sure when people show up, they have a good experience. 00:59:27.000 --> 00:59:42.000 Pete Meyer: No, you’re exactly right. You hit the nail on the head right there. We’re trying to preserve the Saturday experience. That’s the day everybody wants to ski. So if you’re going to be on a pass and ski at Calgary on a pass, you got to have the seven-day week pass. 00:59:42.000 --> 01:00:00.000 Pete Meyer: And we wanted to protect that experience and not get overcrowded, not get overrun, and that’s one of the main reasons that we got rid of the weekend pass. The weekend pass, we roll out, it was a $99 weekend pass in 2007 when we launched that, and that thing went all the way till. 01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:14.000 Pete Meyer: I think 2000 or 2001, we had that, so we had that for a long time, and that brought a lot of skiers here and exposed us as we continued to get better, and they saw the resort that we had, and all the work that Tim was doing on the hill. 01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:21.000 Pete Meyer: And then that just evolved into trying to manage the volume levels on Saturdays. 01:00:21.000 --> 01:00:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it’s a, it’s, it’s a great deal. And, uh, you know, even, even as it’s risen past 99, I mean, you know, 299, there’s, there’s a lot of resorts in the West that are charging more than that for a day this year. Beaver Creek’s topping out at 392. So I love it. Okay. The last thing I want to. 01:00:38.000 --> 01:00:48.000 Stuart Winchester: This one’s a little personal, and I know I talked to you about this, uh, it was about 4 years ago, Tim or Pete, I forget, it was maybe both of you I was talking to. So I want to talk about this Trail Starkey. 01:00:48.000 --> 01:01:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, I knew Dick Starkey. I’m friends with his daughter Crystal from way back. We went to school together. Uh, and, and I met him and I, I was always just remember being very impressed by him. He had a really good presence. Uh, he was, he was very fit and active and, and did a lot of things. 01:01:03.000 --> 01:01:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Um, I didn’t know him super well, but I met him a few times, and… and I… I just want to talk about, you know, he passed. 01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Four or five years ago now, and I noticed this trail and, and I said, oh, is that, is that named after Dick? And, and you said it was. So, uh, can, can you talk about the Starkey trail? Talk about Dick Starkey and, and, uh, his legacy at Cabre Fay and, and, and why it was fitting to name a. 01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:34.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, Dick was a volunteer patroller at SP, patroller at Caber Fay for… 01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:42.000 Pete Meyer: I think… I… I think as long as… as my dad was around, you know, uh, Dick was there, and so, you know. 01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:52.000 Pete Meyer: 40… however many years, 40… 40-some years, he was a patroller at Cabaret, and uh… you know, just had a big presence, you know, you knew him. 01:01:52.000 --> 01:01:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 01:01:52.000 --> 01:02:01.000 Pete Meyer: Played football at Ferris. Great stories about that. He was a captain and so he’s tough. 01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 01:02:01.000 --> 01:02:02.000 Pete Meyer: And. 01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:17.000 Pete Meyer: just a… just a great guy, great patroller, great mentor, um, a ton… lots and lots of stories about Dick Starkey for another day, but, uh, just somebody that we wanted to honor, and, um, so, you know, we made that change. 01:02:17.000 --> 01:02:21.000 Stuart Winchester: And why this trail? Why this, uh, why did you choose this one? 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:35.000 Pete Meyer: you know, that… I don’t… I don’t know why we picked that one. We just… we… we… I think we… the, um… the previous name was an old, you know, an older name that… that… that honored a… 01:02:35.000 --> 01:02:47.000 Pete Meyer: an older ski instructor, but I think we thought, you know, maybe… maybe it was time for a change there. Some… maybe just something a little more relevant to… someone more relevant to… 01:02:41.000 --> 01:02:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:52.000 Pete Meyer: You know, this this last, you know, 40 years of caprophage tradition. 01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. And, and I believe, I believe Crystal still, uh, volunteer patrols there as well, right? Yeah. 01:02:56.000 --> 01:02:59.000 Pete Meyer: Yes. Yes, she is. 01:02:57.000 --> 01:03:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that’s great. I haven’t talked to her in a minute, but hi, Crystal. Hope you’re doing great. Pete. 01:03:03.000 --> 01:03:05.000 Pete Meyer: No, no, not about the trail. 01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:22.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, okay, all right. Well, hey, listen, guys, I really appreciate catching up with you. There’s so much always going on at Cabaret, and we were long overdue, so let’s do it again soon, and I gotta get up there and ski that East Peak lift, because I haven’t been in a minute, so I really appreciate that, and I’ll talk to you guys soon, and thanks so much. 01:03:22.000 --> 01:03:25.000 Pete Meyer: Thanks, Stuart. Thanks a lot, Stu. Appreciate it. 01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:26.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, talk soon. 01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:28.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, let me just… 01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, that was Tim and Pete Meyer of Cabaret. I love Cabaret. It was my pseudo home mountain when I lived in Michigan. It was just 90 minutes down the road, so I never had a season pass there. 01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:51.000 Stuart Winchester: but I would go there a lot. I mean, and this was, you know, lift tickets were $20 or something back then, so it didn’t really matter, and they had a lot of specials. So, I want to… 01:03:51.000 --> 01:03:57.000 Stuart Winchester: wrap up today, I want to talk about lift tickets a little bit, because there’s some lift ticket deals going on. 01:03:57.000 --> 01:03:59.000 Stuart Winchester: And… 01:03:59.000 --> 01:04:14.000 Stuart Winchester: I’ll tell you about the deals first, and then I’ll, I’ll tell you what I make of them as a, as a theme. So we’re gonna focus on Colorado for a moment. So Arapahoe Basin, to celebrate its 80th anniversary, is doing $80 lift tickets every Wednesday. 01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:29.000 Stuart Winchester: from late December through April, except for December 30th, which is holiday week, of course. Uh, they are $50 on Wednesdays outside of those windows, so early season at A-Basin, and then late season, and of course, uh, the mountain typically goes until June. 01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:35.000 Stuart Winchester: $80 lift ticket today, based in on their anniversary weekend, Saturday and Sunday, December 5th and 6th. 01:04:35.000 --> 01:04:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Also, anyone born in 1946, making you 80 years old, skis free all winter. Uh, A-Basin has a lot of ways to get in cheap. They have 3-day packs. 01:04:45.000 --> 01:05:00.000 Stuart Winchester: With no blackouts, any day, use any 3 days for $249. They have midweek packs, 5 days for $319. Midweek season pass is $539, and a full is $699, and of course, A-Basin is unlimited on both the Icon and the Icon. 01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, base pass, and I wanna see… 01:05:03.000 --> 01:05:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, they did get rid of the fall pass. I had… 01:05:09.000 --> 01:05:21.000 Stuart Winchester: I had emailed, because… because A-Basin used to have this great pass for, like, 250 bucks. It was from opening day until Christmas, but they did get rid of it. Uh, and… and they… Shayna from A-Basin emailed, and she told me. 01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, for background, that was a very small audience for, for us who were interested in the Fall Pass pack. So, uh, so thank you, Shayna, for getting back to me so quickly, and I’d sent that right before the podcast started. So, so A-Basin deals on Wednesdays, you know, put that down in your. 01:05:37.000 --> 01:05:55.000 Stuart Winchester: List if you, if you wanna actually day ski and maybe you have an epic pass, but you wanna, you miss a basin. Uh, and then Thursdays Copper Mountain is again doing $99 Thursdays. They’re play for every Thursdays and a portion of that goes to a good cause. They’re doing that every Thursday from January 7th to April 8th. 01:05:55.000 --> 01:06:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Including the holiday week in February, I don’t know if that’s a mistake, but grab it while you can, because I don’t think they can take it back once you buy it. Uh, and then. 01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:05.000 Stuart Winchester: $99 a copper. 01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:19.000 Stuart Winchester: starting Monday, April 12th, which is pretty awesome. So, if you wanted to do a little day ski, and, you know, right now you can still buy tickets and everything, or still buy passes, because we’re recording this on September 17th. 01:06:19.000 --> 01:06:30.000 Stuart Winchester: But if you’re listening in the future, you could do a Wednesday $80 a day basin, a Thursday $99 at Copper Mountain. It’s not a bad couple days in Summit County for a pretty reasonable price, given. 01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:44.000 Stuart Winchester: prices in 2026 for lift tickets at most mountains. Uh, down the road, Aspen, for its 80th anniversary, is doing $80 lift tickets Saturday and Sunday, December 12th and 13th. They also offered… 01:06:44.000 --> 01:07:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, tickets for $3 and 75 cents for Monday, December 14th. But those are sold out and they, I’m pretty much sure they sold out instantly. And it’s funny ‘cause they didn’t even market it at first. And, and Aspen folks tell me they just blew off the shelves. So that is for Aspen’s 80th anniversary. 01:07:01.000 --> 01:07:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Same year as, uh, a basin is celebrating right now. And of course, some of the little guys around there, you know, ski Cooper hasn’t announced their lift ticket prices yet. And I know it’s small, but it’s still, it’s, it’s a place you can go. It’s high. There’s no snow making. It’s all natural snow. 01:07:17.000 --> 01:07:22.000 Stuart Winchester: $49 midweek tickets at Ski Cooper last year, maxed out at $99 on weekends. 01:07:22.000 --> 01:07:30.000 Stuart Winchester: Down the road, if you’re on your way to Aspen, Sunlight, which has 1,750 feet of vertical drop. 01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:46.000 Stuart Winchester: And two brand new lifts. Well, one was from a base and used, but it was only 20 years old. So they put in two brand new lifts last year. Big vertical. Uh, their lift tickets max out at $109. Midweek, they’re $74 to $94. It’s a fun little area. It gives you Colorado. 01:07:46.000 --> 01:07:53.000 Stuart Winchester: with a little bit more of a… a throwback Colorado, old Colorado feel. So, so the question here is. 01:07:53.000 --> 01:07:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Are we starting to see a rationalization? 01:07:57.000 --> 01:07:58.000 Stuart Winchester: In the lift ticket market. 01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Are we starting to see ski areas value the skier that. 01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:19.000 Stuart Winchester: maybe has an Icon Pass, but wants to ski another mountain for a day? Or I guess more in this case, since Copper and A-Basin are both Epic Pass mountains, are we seeing them take advantage of the fact that right now, if you look at prices for. 01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Breckenridge, it’s $153 to ski on Friday, November 6th. Who knows what they’ll have open? Probably not a lot. 01:08:27.000 --> 01:08:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it’s 180 that day. Breckenridge goes over 300 for peak days. Uh, and on Monday, April 19th, as, as copper has dropped to 99, Breck right now is set to have a $179 walkup price for Monday, April 19th. So. 01:08:43.000 --> 01:08:49.000 Stuart Winchester: I think you’re seeing some smart reactions from some of the… 01:08:49.000 --> 01:08:55.000 Stuart Winchester: larger players and showing there’s still a competitive market in Colorado. The question is… 01:08:55.000 --> 01:09:07.000 Stuart Winchester: will Vail follow? In their earnings call, one of their earnings calls recently, uh, Rob Katz, or their end-of-year earnings, their CEO, Rob Katz, said that Lyft ticket sales had softened considerably. 01:09:07.000 --> 01:09:14.000 Stuart Winchester: To absolutely no one’s surprise, uh, because of the price of lift tickets. So, Ken Vale… 01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:27.000 Stuart Winchester: find a way in the softer seasons to start to compete, because it’s clear that their direct competitors are doing so. So let’s look at… I want to go… 01:09:28.000 --> 01:09:33.000 Stuart Winchester: to the Encyclopedia Britannica for a minute, and I want to give you some of these. 01:09:33.000 --> 01:09:41.000 Stuart Winchester: of these top lift ticket prices for the year. And, and I’ll tell you why I care about top lift ticket prices. And, and I know some of you say, well, it doesn’t matter. 01:09:41.000 --> 01:09:46.000 Stuart Winchester: I think it does matter, and I’ll tell you why. 01:09:46.000 --> 01:10:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Aspen’s peak lift ticket this year for any of the Four Mountains, or all of the Four Mountains, however you want to look at it, is $309. They used to keep pretty on par with Vail. Not anymore. Vail will hit $374. 01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Beaver Creek tops in the nation, probably the world $392 in some parts of the world that will get you on a helicopter. Like no joke. I hired a guide in Europe and this was several years ago, but we took one heli run and I think the day was, I don’t know, €250. 01:10:17.000 --> 01:10:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and then that also got us onto the resort for a guide for the rest of the day. So, so it, you know, 392, that’s, that’s something else. Uh, Steamboat will be 344. That’s an Alterra-owned mountain. Another Alterra flagship, Deer Valley, is 349. Vail flagship, Park City, is set to be 369. Again, these are peak day walk-up rates. 01:10:36.000 --> 01:10:49.000 Stuart Winchester: So we’re seeing these continue to rise around Colorado. I don’t think that that will change. I wish it would, but I don’t think it will. They’re busy enough at those times. We’re actually seeing a little softening in Tahoe. 01:10:49.000 --> 01:11:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And Vale didn’t, as far as I know, really promote this hard, but Heavenly, their top lift ticket last year was 3 0 5. They’ve knocked that to 2 84 and a big drop at North Star 3 29 was their top lift ticket rate last year. And that’s down. 01:11:04.000 --> 01:11:21.000 Stuart Winchester: So I think possibly we found the top of the market in Tahoe. In New England, Mount Snow, that’s Vail, $206. Killington, Independent, $225. Stratton, that’s Altera, $229. Okemo, $231. 01:11:21.000 --> 01:11:33.000 Stuart Winchester: And Stowe, Vail’s flagship in New England, $272. So, you’re probably saying, Stu, why do you care? We know you don’t pay these prices. No one listening to this podcast pays those prices. 01:11:33.000 --> 01:11:49.000 Stuart Winchester: But I don’t… and… and… trust me, the ski companies are frustrated that I talk about these prices. Why are you talking about a $392 lift ticket? There’s so many ways to get on Beaver Creek for cheaper. Well, because it’s a $392 lift ticket. And some people… 01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:54.000 Stuart Winchester: People don’t know that, and if they haven’t skied in. 01:11:54.000 --> 01:11:55.000 Stuart Winchester: A decade? 01:11:55.000 --> 01:12:09.000 Stuart Winchester: 15 years, and maybe their brother-in-law gets a place out in Vail, and suddenly they go up, and they say, okay, we’ll just get lift tickets when we get there, because that’s what they’ve done before. 01:12:09.000 --> 01:12:18.000 Stuart Winchester: And maybe they like skiing, but maybe they stepped away from it because they had kids, or they moved to a place where there wasn’t a lot of snow. And this is their chance… this is the chance to recapture them. 01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:29.000 Stuart Winchester: And I thought Jason Bay said it really well yesterday about Camelback, and I know Camelback is not Vail Mountain, but, you know, he would rather create a… a lifelong customer. 01:12:29.000 --> 01:12:32.000 Stuart Winchester: than a one-time customer. And I think that what you see… 01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:38.000 Stuart Winchester: with these really mega-huge lift ticket prices. So that’s just for one day. So imagine… 01:12:38.000 --> 01:12:44.000 Stuart Winchester: you’re a family of four, and you get out to Beaver Creek, and you’re gonna ski for a week, and you find out it’s gonna be $8,000. 01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:55.000 Stuart Winchester: for the 4U, it’s an idiot tax, or maybe an ignorance tax, right? I experienced this recently myself, because obviously I’m really tuned into skiing, but I rented a car in Ireland. 01:12:55.000 --> 01:13:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And I’ve rented cars all over the world, all over Europe, and I’ve always just said, oh, my credit card covers it. 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:14.000 Stuart Winchester: So I got to Ireland, and they have their own set of rules, which I should have researched, but again, it’s an idiot tax, and they said, uh, sorry, we need proof. 01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Your credit card covers this. 01:13:16.000 --> 01:13:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Or, it’s gonna be… I think it was another 45 euros a day, and we were there for, you know, a good 10-12 days. 01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:32.000 Stuart Winchester: So, I paid. I paid the idiot tax, because I didn’t want to go through the process of proving the credit card, which I didn’t even know how to do that, or if I could reach them. 01:13:32.000 --> 01:13:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And, you know, I learned my lesson. I feel kind of dumb, and I think that’s what ultimately ends up happening at skiing. I’ll never forget this experience I had at Steamboat in 2020. This was right before the shutdowns. 01:13:47.000 --> 01:14:02.000 Stuart Winchester: And I went into the ticket office. It’s right at the base of the gondola. Well, I don’t know if they’ve moved it around with all the stuff they’ve done, but it was at the base of the original gondola. I haven’t been back since Wild Blue was put in, but there was a ticket office right there, and I walked in, and. 01:14:02.000 --> 01:14:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Alpine slide tickets, because she just loves the Alpine slides, and we were done skiing for the day, and that stayed open a little bit later, and there was a big ticket board up. 01:14:10.000 --> 01:14:22.000 Stuart Winchester: and it gave you the prices for all of the lift tickets for one day, two day, three… and at the time, I mean, this seems quaint now, they were $200 and whatever dollars, so it was over $200. 01:14:22.000 --> 01:14:30.000 Stuart Winchester: And the… I’ve never seen a sadder line in my life. Like, the people just looked bereft. They just looked like… 01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:45.000 Stuart Winchester: why are we doing this? You could tell that they were somehow thrust into this situation, and they looked like dead people walking, and they looked like people who were probably going to vacation in the Florida Keys the following year, because they. 01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:50.000 Stuart Winchester: See those lift ticket prices, and if there’s no… 01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:55.000 Stuart Winchester: immediate notification that there’s a better way to do it. If there’s no way to buy the bigger pass. 01:14:55.000 --> 01:15:11.000 Stuart Winchester: I love Vail’s Turn Your Ticket program. I love that they’re reemphasizing it. I don’t think Icon has anything like that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it turns into a one time very frustrated experience. And, you know, any marketer will tell you people talk about their bad experiences. 01:15:11.000 --> 01:15:18.000 Stuart Winchester: much more than their good experiences. So I think the lift ticket market is out of control. 01:15:18.000 --> 01:15:33.000 Stuart Winchester: I hope that there is a market correction happening. I don’t have enough confidence to say that right now, but I can say that, unlike in some of the previous years, there are deals out there, even in the heart of ski country. 01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:35.000 Stuart Winchester: In Summit County. 01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:53.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, this podcast is brought to you today by Profile Search. A lot of you come to this podcast to hear from the best minds in skiing. But what if you want to find one of these great leaders for your own mountain team? Well, you should call Profile Search International, the ski industry talent acquisition experts. 01:15:53.000 --> 01:15:59.000 Stuart Winchester: The only executive search and recruitment firm in the world that is 100% focused on the ski industry. 01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Profile searches use their intimate understanding of skiing and related industries and of available candidates worldwide to place hundreds of transformational leaders at the best and most progressive ski areas over the past 30 years. 01:16:12.000 --> 01:16:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Profile search has offices in the US and Canada. They find and negotiate with the right leaders for your team. 01:16:18.000 --> 01:16:31.000 Stuart Winchester: You can reach out to Profile Search directly at profilesearch.com, or contact them by email or phone, or send me a note at skiing at substack.com. My email is skiing at substack.com. 01:16:31.000 --> 01:16:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Might go to spam, I might miss it, but I will try to check my spam folder, and connect you directly with this expert team. 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:41.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, this is where I would normally… 01:16:42.000 --> 01:16:54.000 Stuart Winchester: look at feedback from readers on yesterday’s podcast, but I put it out really late, so I don’t know how much feedback I’m gonna have, because sometimes these interviews are just in the evening, so… 01:16:54.000 --> 01:16:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Let’s see if there’s any comments. There must be a better way to get to the comments. Okay. 01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, this is from Gustav, longtime paid subscriber. I love that Camelback is pushing their season length. Every region or sub region needs a place like that for the ski community to congregate in the spring. I, I totally agree. And it’s great that the Mid-Atlantic. 01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Has that and they’re being aggressive about it. Camelback has a little elevation to help them out. 01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:35.000 Stuart Winchester: In the Midwest, you see Lutzen and Granite Peak will sometimes operate into May, but Boyne Mountain has really been pushing it. They sometimes have a competition with, uh, with Mount Bohemia, which has no snow making, which is funny ‘cause Boyne has like the best snow making and to see who can close the latest. 01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:50.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, up in New England, you have Black Mountain, improbably has come up in New Hampshire, and Mogensen has been on the podcast recently, and even though it faces south and has a low elevation, he’s been keeping Black Mountain open into May for the past couple of years, and of course. 01:17:50.000 --> 01:18:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, Killington, Sugarbush, and Jay Peak always stay open pretty late in Vermont, and uh… and Jay Peak’s been pushing it the last couple years into mid… mid-May, and… and Killington will go to June when they can. 01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, which I don’t think they did this year. Uh, anyway, then out west, you, you have the obvious players. You have A-Basin, you have Snowbird, you have Mammoth, you have Palisades Tahoe, uh, you sometimes get Crystal up in, up in, uh, Washington. 01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:26.000 Stuart Winchester: And Bachelor will go late in the ski areas in Mount Hood. Of course, not a lot of good late operators. You know who needs a late operator? 01:18:26.000 --> 01:18:31.000 Stuart Winchester: is, like, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. 01:18:31.000 --> 01:18:39.000 Stuart Winchester: I know that Wyoming has that Beartooth Basin ski area that opens, but am I missing any? Because I don’t think anyone goes for May. 01:18:39.000 --> 01:18:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And Big Sky told me a few years ago they were gonna start trying to go for May, but I… have not seen them do that yet. 01:18:47.000 --> 01:18:56.000 Stuart Winchester: Anyway, this is getting too long, and my editor is going to scold me severely. So, I am going to wrap up the show for today. 01:18:56.000 --> 01:19:11.000 Stuart Winchester: The next show will be tomorrow, it will be the Ask Me Anything, so if you’ve not gotten your questions in yet, please get them over to me. If you are a paid subscriber, that is who I’m reading the questions from. And I’ve got some pretty good questions so far, but I wouldn’t mind a couple more. 01:19:11.000 --> 01:19:17.000 Stuart Winchester: For more content to get all of the Storm’s updates, reading, writing, podcasts. 01:19:17.000 --> 01:19:32.000 Stuart Winchester: as soon as they’re out, please go to StormSkiing.com, subscribe to the Storm Skiing newsletter, and the very best way to support independent ski journalism is to upgrade to a paid subscription at StormSkiing.com, which will give you the ability to interact with this podcast, and… 00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Makes your Michigan pop a little more. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:30.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Yes. 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Well, I appreciate you, uh, breaking the rules. 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:51.000 Stuart Winchester: for me, Tim. It’s, uh, I think, I think so far, the video’s gotten pretty good reaction. Let me, uh, make sure my transcript is back on. Okay, started the transcript. Okay, good. Gotta set up all my systems. 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:38.000 Pete Meyer: Okay. 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:51.000 Pete Meyer: Okay. 00:21:51.000 --> 00:22:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Um, and I’m recording this a little different than the old style, so I’m going in one continuous stream now, so I’ll actually do the show intro, and then I’ll introduce you guys, and then we’ll get into it. 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:02.000 Pete Meyer: Okay. 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:05.000 Stuart Winchester: Let me start the recording. 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.000 Stuart Winchester: All right. I think I didn’t mess anything up. We’ll see. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:13.000 Stuart Winchester: All right. 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:29.000 Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the storm. I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026, and we are going to mix things up a little bit today. Instead of starting with the takes, we are starting with the guests, and I have some great guests today. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:40.000 Stuart Winchester: They are the general managers of Cabrifay Peaks, Michigan, with over 200 acres of terrain served by 4 chairlifts across 3 peaks, with a 485-foot vertical drop. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabar Fay is one of the largest ski areas in Michigan’s Lower Penins. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 Stuart Winchester: The ski area averaged 120 inches of lake effect snowfall per winter. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Their family has operated Cabaret since 1980. They are co-general managers, with Tim Meyer on the right, handling everything on the mountain, and Pete Meyer on the left, taking care of everything off. Tim and Pete, welcome to the storm. I’m always hyped to talk Cabaret. How are you guys doing today? 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:11.000 Pete Meyer: Good. We’re doing awesome. Thanks for having us. Yeah. 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and trigger warning for any Sparties or Buckeyes out there who want to go to the video version on stormskiing.com or YouTube. Me and Tim are both proudly rocking our Wolverines gear. This is a shirt I wore to the maze out when Michigan blasted Oklahoma in the big house this past weekend. So we’re feeling. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Although I understand Tim’s also got a little Sparty, side loyalty. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:35.000 Pete Meyer: Yes, my children, both my sons are Spartans, so that’s… 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, as soon as my daughter got into college, I bought all the gear for her place. So, you know, there’s tons going on at Cabaret, and I want to start… 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:36.000 Pete Meyer: It. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:54.000 Stuart Winchester: with this coming expansion, and you, you announced this a while ago, and I’m gonna share my screen here so that everyone can see, uh, see this as we talk through it. 00:23:54.000 --> 00:24:13.000 Stuart Winchester: And this is where I am never quite as fast as I want to be. Uh, but… okay. So, here is the Cabra Fay trail map. This is the one I took off your website this morning, so it’s the most current that I have. Uh, and last time I talked to Tim in, I think, 2021, when you came on the podcast. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it… 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:31.000 Stuart Winchester: This East Peak triple chair was still still in a theory phase and you hadn’t built yet. Now that’s in place and we’ll talk about that in a minute and how that’s gone. But talk to us about the Green Mountain triple chair, what we’re getting and why you’re building it. 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:34.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, so, um… 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.000 Pete Meyer: I’m going to start with why, because it’s kind of an interesting story, you know. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:51.000 Pete Meyer: we… when we put in the East Peak lift, we took out the shelter chairlift, the double. They started in almost the same place, but the shelter… the shelter lift. 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.000 Pete Meyer: let off about halfway up the hill. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:04.000 Pete Meyer: And because we we have our dads before us and then and then we also have continued to develop the terrain. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:13.000 Pete Meyer: the terrain changes and the flow changes. And what happened over time, like, especially over the last. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:16.000 Pete Meyer: 25 years or so. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:23.000 Pete Meyer: we kept adding on to Smiling Irishman and making it wider and wider and wider, and it got busier and busier and busier, so… 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:29.000 Pete Meyer: The shelter chairlift was essentially letting off these new skiers. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:33.000 Pete Meyer: in the middle of flowing traffic. And… 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:37.000 Pete Meyer: We thought when we put in the East Peak lift. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:41.000 Pete Meyer: Now we’re gonna take these lower end skiers to the top. 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:55.000 Pete Meyer: we’re going to give them a longer run, and the new part we’re giving them is actually the easier half. They’re already negotiating the tougher half, the steeper half, and the narrower half. If we add the upper half, it’s easier, it’s wider, it should be fine. 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:06.000 Pete Meyer: And that’s what we thought. And so we put it in and then but then what we found and this is the this is the piece that you learn as you go. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.000 Pete Meyer: is… 00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:15.000 Pete Meyer: The new skiers accepted being let off at the lower level, and having to merge into traffic, because. 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Pete Meyer: They didn’t really know any different and that it was the psychological factor. Well, I’m only halfway up the mountain. I can, I can do this. When we took them up to the top, you know, that East Peak lift actually feels like a out, it almost feels like an out West lift. It has. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:43.000 Pete Meyer: like, three rises, you know? So you ride… you go up over a break, and then you… and then you go again for a while, and then up over another break, and then you’re coming into the top, and you… you know, you’re above… 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:47.000 Pete Meyer: Tree line, basically, and you can see the horizon, and it just… 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Pete Meyer: would kind of psych out that new skier, you know, they would just, they would. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.000 Pete Meyer: They’d get up there and kind of freeze and panic, and… 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:06.000 Pete Meyer: say, there’s no way I’m gonna go down, you know, I’m not gonna go down that hill. And, uh, so we found our ski patrol having to give a lot of lessons just to get people down the hill, and… 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:13.000 Pete Meyer: And, um, and so we, we just, we kind of knew that we had a, you know, a little bit of an issue that we had to work through. 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:21.000 Pete Meyer: And so Pete and I would be talking, you know, and I would say, I think I have it all figured out, you know, I’m saying, um… 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:34.000 Pete Meyer: we just need to give them… make sure that all the… every single new skier gets a lesson, and we get them ready to… you know, we get them ready to go. And a lot of the… a lot of this is the school groups, you know, the different groups, and we do offer lessons. 00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000 Pete Meyer: to everybody, but sometimes they don’t take them, and, you know, they slide, they slide through, and… 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:42.000 Pete Meyer: And so. 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:50.000 Pete Meyer: Pete and I were having a meeting on Green Mountain with our ski patrol director, Katie, and Dennis, one of our top instructors. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:59.000 Pete Meyer: And we think we have it all figured out. You know, we’re just we just need to put them through a lesson and then and then problem solved. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:00.000 Pete Meyer: And… 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:12.000 Pete Meyer: And Dennis, our ski instructor, was like, almost grabbed right onto my jacket. He’s like, you don’t understand. I can’t get them ready for East Peak on this. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:23.000 Pete Meyer: we need something in between, and I… and… and so it’s like, oh, oh, well, what do you need, Dennis? And he pointed up at the Green Mountain, and he said, we need that. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:41.000 Pete Meyer: And I… I said, well, I think we have a plan for that on a cocktail napkin somewhere. We could go look at that again. So basically, what… what hap… what it was is we… we had always had this. We… we actually had lift lines staked out, and we hadn’t been looking at doing this. We just thought it would be… 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:51.000 Pete Meyer: the last thing that we do. We thought we would… we would continue to develop into the… into the backcountry area, and then do the Green Mountain expansion later. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:06.000 Pete Meyer: But what the… what the customer told us was, no, you need the Green Mountain expansion now. So that’s the why and the how, that all of a sudden that thing kind of appeared out of nowhere, and why it was a two… 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:14.000 Pete Meyer: why it’s a two-year construction, because there’s nothing over there. No services. Um, so we’ve had… we had to… 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:18.000 Pete Meyer: You know, we had to do the final planning kind of fast. 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:30.000 Pete Meyer: so we wanted to take 2 years to do it. Um, and so what are you getting? You’re getting about 135 vertical feet, a brand new Doppelmayr triple. 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:38.000 Pete Meyer: uh, that’s just like East Peak and just like Vista, so it’s gonna show this, you know, it’s gonna take the new skier, um. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:43.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, and get them going on a lift that’s similar to what we have throughout the area. 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:55.000 Pete Meyer: it runs a little bit slower, has a bigger chair spacing, so it’s going to be a little bit easier to load and unload. And when it’s all built out, we should have 4 or 5. 00:29:55.000 --> 00:30:00.000 Pete Meyer: really, uh, easy trails, but with character. I mean, these aren’t just… 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:14.000 Pete Meyer: you know, a football field at 10 degrees that doesn’t have any character. These are, you know, tree-lined, um, interesting slopes. Uh, the lift itself actually goes through the woods. 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:20.000 Pete Meyer: and part of the way, and it’s just a really neat development. So we think that. 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:32.000 Pete Meyer: You know, even though it’s not big vertical, it lifts about a thousand feet long. The terrain has really good character and we think it’s going to be really popular. 00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:47.000 Stuart Winchester: I’ve always loved that about Cabaret. My favorite section of Cabaret for the folks who are watching is this sort of lower section where all the trails split off. And I’ve always found it a little confusing and fun. And I like confusing. I like it. I feel like it makes ski areas feel bigger than they are. 00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:59.000 Stuart Winchester: I want to zoom out a little bit and connect this expansion to some larger ski industry narratives, because the narrative that won’t die is that the big corporate consolidation and big passes are killing the independents. 00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:15.000 Stuart Winchester: here I’m looking at Cabra Fay, family-owned for the last 46 years, and in 2016, you put in a brand new triple chair right here on North Peak. In 2022, you put in the brand new East Peak triple chair, and then you’re putting in this brand new Green Mountain triple chair next year, at least that’s the plan. I mean… 00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:31.000 Stuart Winchester: So you’re affording three new chairlifts. Uh, you know, Monarch was willing to tell me out in Colorado. Yeah, we, and we paid cash for them. I don’t know if you, if you have, you know, theories on debt. I know a lot of scare operators like Platykill in New York, like to stay out of debt, but, but how did Cab. 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:40.000 Stuart Winchester: How is Calgary managing all these capital upgrades, and what does it say, do you think, about independents competing in 2026? 00:31:41.000 --> 00:32:05.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, I don’t have access to the checkbook, so you have to let me answer that one. No, that’s a great question, Stu. And Tim kind of hit on this on his first podcast with you, but when Tim and I got moved back here in 2001, we had what I call like soul crushing debt. You know, it was just crippling, like every dollar we made had to go and service the debt. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:08.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, we didn’t have… 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:18.000 Pete Meyer: really any money to even make capital improvements or to do much of anything. So our our main mission early on was try to try to get out of debt and get out of that hole. 00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:35.000 Pete Meyer: And, you know, our dad’s done a nice job developing and building, and they got it out of bankruptcy. So when you get something out of bankruptcy, they’ve already cut every corner and done all kinds of deferred maintenance, pushed it all off. So we had quite a bit to deal with, and it was a long… 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:36.000 Pete Meyer: Um… 00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:46.000 Pete Meyer: the long slugfest. Tim and I call those the dark days, you know, about 10 years of just really grinding. And then, finally, right, you know. 00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:58.000 Pete Meyer: about 2015, we were able to, uh, to get out of debt, and then… and then we started to, um, really put capital back into it, and that’s why we decided on… on… 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:02.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, putting in some new chairlifts, and yes, we have not gone back into debt since. 00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:14.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s fantastic, and as you think to the future, okay, you have this North Peak quad chair, built in, I think, 92, and then you have the South Peak triple, which I think early 80s lift, it’s a riblet, which… 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:29.000 Stuart Winchester: As you know, is out of business now. I think this one’s a SeaTac. So, I don’t know if when, you know, you give a really good summary, Tim, of how East Peak changed traffic around the mountain. Uh, I, I’ve seen a, there’s a ton of comments. I was just scrolling through, through Lyft blog for the folks watching. 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:41.000 Stuart Winchester: to show Peter’s excellent pictures of that lift. And the Cabaret page on there has a ton of comments, and I’m sure you’ve seen them. So, there’s a lot of wondering, it seems, among skiers. 00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Why the quad is still here, because it… 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:57.000 Stuart Winchester: they don’t seem to think it runs a lot, and they think the triple does the job. Is there any thought of moving the quad, or do you really need 7 seats here? Or, just thinking long-term, what does the lift distribution look like across Cabaret Fay as you look at this map? 00:33:57.000 --> 00:34:13.000 Pete Meyer: Well, I think that we do need the quad on the busiest days, right? Otherwise, the reason we put the Vista Triple in there is the lines on the quad used to get so long. And it was like, that’s the artery. I mean, you know, more people. 00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.000 Pete Meyer: go through the North Peak complex. 00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:34.000 Pete Meyer: every day than than the others, you know, because it’s the middle. And so it’s you go through there on your way to and from South Peak, and a lot of people just ski there because it’s really really good inter advanced, intermediate and intermediate type terrain, and even some advanced beginner terrain. So it. 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:43.000 Pete Meyer: It services a wide range of abilities. So I think you want to have the two lifts. 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:45.000 Pete Meyer: Um… 00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:58.000 Pete Meyer: I think ultimately, though, we want to have more places for people to go, more pods of skiing, so that actually you do run the quad less and less, but you have it there so that on the really busy days. 00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:14.000 Pete Meyer: you can turn it on and have, you know, a lift that doesn’t have a line that somebody can sit on and ride up. But, um, I don’t know if that answers the question. Yeah, right now, Stu, we run it 3 days a week, Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays, the busier days, and so… 00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:24.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, we don’t run it, uh, Monday through Thursday, just because it’s a redundant lift, and we don’t need the uphill capacity, um, is… is why people say it’s not running some of the time. 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I guess what I was getting at is, is there a world where you move the quad over here to serve some of this backcountry terrain and in the top of Green Mountain? As it’s, as there’s kind of open space on the trail map and, and knowing Gary Milken, how he designs maps, he sometimes leaves that space. 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:57.000 Stuart Winchester: for expansion. So, so what’s the thought around, you know, and you alluded to it earlier when you were thinking about a lift for backcountry, and Tim, you had mentioned even maybe reviving those halls. I don’t know if that’s still a possibility. I don’t know if they’re still sitting at the bottom of the mountain here, but what’s the thought on. 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:02.000 Stuart Winchester: potential expansion over in this area or lifts in this area long term. 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:17.000 Pete Meyer: I think that would be the next frontier. So, somewhere in the bottom… because you’ve skied here, Stu, you know if you go through the backcountry, you run out of gas, and then you have… and then you have to walk, and that’s why we call it backcountry, because it’s a… 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:27.000 Pete Meyer: Because it’s a tearful experience for many people coming out of there in the flats. And so somewhere down in that basin. 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:40.000 Pete Meyer: there could, there could be a lift someday that goes up to east of the top of East Peak. And Stu, what Tim had alluded to earlier in his first answer is that that was our original plan, so that would have been. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:34.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:58.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, that was the plan to be our next chairlift, was to service that area. But due to the reaction and the response of our skiers, you know, we deviated and focused on… and moved to Green Mountain. Um, and, you know, one thing we found is that transition from the magic carpet, right there on the trail map, you can see, to the East Peak chair. 00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:36:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:15.000 Pete Meyer: was just too much for most of our skiers. And not only were we not doing Cabaret any favors, but we’re not doing the industry any favors. You know, it’s just, it was asking them to do too much, too big of a, make too much of a jump. So by putting in this East Peak. 00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:30.000 Pete Meyer: chair, and then we’ll have all green runs that’ll all be, um, varying degrees of difficulty of a green run, but all of them will be in between the Magic Carpet slope and the Smiling Irishman slope, so it’ll be a really nice. 00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:43.000 Pete Meyer: transition, and quite frankly, we think a lot of school groups and a lot of skiers are going to come out, um, and never get off that chair, and stay on Green Mountain all day, and have a wildly successful day, and want to return, um, to not only Cabaret Fay, but to other ski. 00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:48.000 Stuart Winchester: I love it, and I can confidently say, because I ski all over, uh, that Cabaret is now… 00:37:48.000 --> 00:38:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And, and especially once you put in this new lift, it’s one of the most modern up to date ski areas in the entire region. And, and that wasn’t always true. When I first skied at Cabaret in the nineties, it was a lot of haul double chairs. I mean, these, these guys were over here, the, the quad and the, and the triple, but. 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:11.000 Stuart Winchester: that, that throwback feel to it. And I know, Tim, when you were on last time, uh, you, you talked, you lamented a little bit. 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:23.000 Stuart Winchester: getting rid of the last rope toe for the carpet, and just sort of the emotion of it, even though you knew it was logically the right thing. What if you could bring back a little throwback by putting a little rope toe right here to bring people out of the backcountry? 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.000 Pete Meyer: Well, you know, it’s funny, I… 00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:36.000 Pete Meyer: I was kind of slow to warm up to getting rid of that rope toe. I guess, you know, I always had that old school… 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:52.000 Pete Meyer: you know, I learned on a rope toe, my kids learned on a rope toe, your kids are going to learn on a rope toe, which is just backwards thinking, right, for a for a ski area manager to have that kind of thought process. I’m not sure. I know where you’re going. I mean, no one knows what the future holds. 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:38:52.000 --> 00:39:09.000 Pete Meyer: I do see ski areas having a lot of success with train parks with fast tows that service them. Again, another cocktail napkin plan that we have that we’re not going to get into in this interview is something like that on our property down the road. 00:38:58.000 --> 00:38:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:16.000 Pete Meyer: Um, so there, you know, I could see that kind of a thing, but, um… 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:26.000 Pete Meyer: And… but I think… I don’t know if we would ever want to put a surface tow out of the backcountry area unless, for some reason, we weren’t going to lift serve it. 00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Got it. 00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:31.000 Pete Meyer: But, you know, I guess, you know, no one knows for sure. 00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:37.000 Pete Meyer: Um, but I wanna… I wanna back up on the Green Mountain expansion a little bit, if… if you’ll let me. 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Sure. 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, do it. Let’s do it. 00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:44.000 Pete Meyer: When we were at the Midwest, uh, show this year, there was a, there was a fireside chat, and we were talking about. 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:54.000 Pete Meyer: We’re talking about, you know, turning first-time skiers into second-time skiers, and making the experience the best it can be. 00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:06.000 Pete Meyer: And so that we have… we have success in that arena. And the Green Mountain… the Green Mountain is… is really a missing piece, because you’re looking at our trail map, and you see how the parking lot is laid out. 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:07.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:12.000 Pete Meyer: Um, so if you’re, you know, trying to make it as easy as possible for somebody who’s never skied before. 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:17.000 Pete Meyer: You can park on pavement right in front of our ticket office. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:24.000 Pete Meyer: Get out of your car, walk a short distance on heated sidewalks to the ticket office. 00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:36.000 Pete Meyer: Get… pay for everything you need. Pay for your skis, pay for your ticket, pay for your rentals, pay for your lesson, and then walk up to the… walk up to the, um… 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:37.000 Pete Meyer: Rental. 00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:52.000 Pete Meyer: In your, in your regular boots, so it’s easy walking, go inside, take your stuff off, take your boots off, get your boots, get your skis and come and then, and then secure your lesson at the end and then walk out the door. 00:40:52.000 --> 00:41:09.000 Pete Meyer: And you’re 30, you know, you’re 30 feet from where the ski school meets and you’re right at the bottom of the conveyor. So it’s really easy to start out and we can get you going on the conveyor. We can virtually get anybody that can stand up on skis or snowboard up to the top. 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:13.000 Pete Meyer: And then put, you know, all their energy into getting them down the hill. 00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:28.000 Pete Meyer: And then once you outgrow that, you just get off the conveyor and you ski down a little slope right onto the East Peak lift. Or, I’m sorry, onto the Green Mountain lift. So now you’re right there, and you have this real easy area. 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:37.000 Pete Meyer: to learn to ski, and then when you, when you’re ready, you just ski down, just ski down the hill to the east peak lift. So the, the flow. 00:41:37.000 --> 00:41:42.000 Pete Meyer: for that never ever in the in the ah, the the. 00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:51.000 Pete Meyer: possibility of getting them to come a second and third and fourth time is really real, and I think… I think we’re in, like, a new stratosphere for getting… 00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:59.000 Pete Meyer: you know, getting people, uh, skiing. And then as it flows, you know, the next step, the next place to ski is East Peak. 00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:10.000 Pete Meyer: And then as you get a little more daring, you work your way into the North Peak complex, and then eventually over to South Peak. So the flow is really natural, and I think it’s going to work out extremely well. 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:21.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it’s like a mini, uh, Copper Mountain. I know you’re a Winter Park guy, but it, you know, the, the, the viability… You know what, the exciting thing, I think, for skiers who are not novices, who know Cabaret Faye well. 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah. 00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:38.000 Stuart Winchester: starts to creep back into old Caber Fay. And, and when we’ve talked a while ago, Tim, I, I didn’t have a good perspective, but some new maps have popped up on ski map.org, which is my go to for old trail maps. And this one I think shows the old terrain really well. So here’s the road looping around, here’s the parking lot. 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And then here’s all the terrain. And so I… Google Earth also makes it really easy. So as I go here… 00:42:47.000 --> 00:43:02.000 Stuart Winchester: I am, for those who are watching, I am zooming in on… so this is what you were talking about, you kind of just park on pavement, you get out here, for those watching on YouTube or StormSkiing.com, the carpet’s right around here, and then this will be green, is that right? 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:07.000 Pete Meyer: No, if you go, if you, if you go back to that old, old trail map, like you can see right to there, there’s a. 00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:14.000 Pete Meyer: A rope toe — there’s two rope toes right there, right up that line, top of that peak. There was two rope toes. 00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Right there? Okay. 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:19.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, heading up that way, and another rope tow coming out at 90 degrees from… from the top. 00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:37.000 Pete Meyer: And that shack still is up there to this day. It’s a two-story tow shack where we had three different rope tows coming in. So it’s going to come right up to the top of that. And that area was always called practice area. That was the old name of it. So if you look at old trail maps, you’ll see that word practice area. 00:43:23.000 --> 00:43:24.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s cool. 00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:41.000 Pete Meyer: It’s a great name for a learn to ski area. 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, here’s another map, the 1971 map has it as practice area. Okay, so I was assuming that you were digging that up, but I guess you’re taking earth from there for the other… is that where you took it for East Peak? Is that what this big sandpit is? 00:43:53.000 --> 00:44:07.000 Pete Meyer: Oh, that’s more of the West Ridge area out into that area. So we’re actually off to the left. It’s all still green. Up into there, yeah, so it’ll be a nice natural hilltop with big mature trees, tree line runs. It’s gonna be really, it’s gonna be really nice. 00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:18.000 Stuart Winchester: So as you… so you can see, for those watching, this is old cab buffet. These are… this is all abandoned, right? I… do you still own this? I mean, it… because once you put the lift up here. 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:37.000 Stuart Winchester: It seems like it could potentially open some of this backside terrain. I know people would love that. It also makes you very big. I don’t know if that’s on your radar as Cabaret continues to grow and succeed, but what are the thoughts on this really cool abandoned terrain that you have back here? And Tim, I know we talked about this a few years ago, but I also know that thoughts evolve over time. 00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:44.000 Pete Meyer: So we do still own all of that. So that area you’re looking at, we do own it. 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:55.000 Pete Meyer: I think that we don’t have any plans to go back into that area at this time, but you never know. 00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:52.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:44:55.000 --> 00:45:04.000 Pete Meyer: Going back, though, a little bit, we don’t want to get too far into the weeds. Unless you want to get into the weeds, we can go. Um, I brought my machete, so we can… 00:45:03.000 --> 00:45:06.000 Stuart Winchester: I live in the weeds, man, that’s, uh, my… 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:22.000 Pete Meyer: we can do what we need to do. But when… way back, going way back to 1982, 83, when South Peak opened, you know, South Peak was redeveloped, all that… a lot of that terrain was still running back then. We were riding T-bars and rope tows on the North Ridge, and West Ridge was alive, and. 00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yes. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:21.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:31.000 Pete Meyer: The practice area tow was still running. So I remember that stuff, you know, as a kid, all happening. And when South Peak was built. 00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:43.000 Pete Meyer: it was so much bigger than all that, you know, vertical-wise. It was, like, twice, you know, twice the vertical, um, real snowmaking, real grooming. 00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:56.000 Pete Meyer: people just abandoned the back… the back hills. They just went… they left that. They left that area, and they went to Salt Peak. And that’s really why it all closed, is people just stopped going back there. It just wasn’t as good. So… 00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Or did they? 00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:00.000 Pete Meyer: I often think maybe it just is better to be a memory. 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:05.000 Pete Meyer: But but who knows? You know, down the road it could be what it could be. 00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think between opening the backcountry and that, uh, the Green Mountain expansion, I think you excited some folks. Alright, that, that’s, uh, that’s, that’s all really cool. I appreciate you taking me inside that. Let’s talk passes now, and I’m. 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:19.000 Stuart Winchester: the screen share here. So, uh… 00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabrefe joined IndyPass as an inaugural member in 2019, and has been on that pass every season since, for the 2026-27 season. Cabrefe has, and I’m just laying this out for the listeners, uh, Cabrefe has departed the IndyPass and has joined. 00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:51.000 Stuart Winchester: The full icon pass, uh, on their two day tier, which is only on the full icon pass, not on the icon base, there’s no access, and there’s also holiday blackout, so the only mountains that are holiday blacked out on the full icon are the, the two day mountains, of which. 00:46:51.000 --> 00:46:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Cabaret is now one. So, so talk us through. 00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:03.000 Stuart Winchester: your experience with IndiePass and the decision, ultimately, to leave that partnership and to join up with ICON. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:09.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, sure, Stu, we have a feeling this might be a topic of conversation today, so… 00:47:07.000 --> 00:47:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:47:09.000 --> 00:47:11.000 Pete Meyer: So we. 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:11.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:22.000 Pete Meyer: There’s a lot of layers to this answer, and this decision was not made quickly or lightly, and a lot of analysis and discussion went into it. 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:37.000 Pete Meyer: To be quite honest, we were… we’ve been frustrated with the IndyPass a little bit for a couple years, and we kind of… we kind of laid out a bunch of, um, the pros and cons list, and the cons list was a lot longer than the pros, and so we… we ultimately kind of came to this decision to exit, and um… 00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:53.000 Pete Meyer: We’re going to talk about — I’ll talk about a couple of those reasons now. But before I do, I think it’s important to provide some history and some context with Cadbury and IndyPass. So as you mentioned, Indy launched in 2019. We were an early adopter. We had some great conversations with Doug Fish that summer. 00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:47:53.000 --> 00:48:10.000 Pete Meyer: Doug worked really hard to get this pass going. We really enjoyed our conversations. He kind of could answer the questions that nobody could answer. He knew things that nobody else knew. And I still remember to this day, I’m like, Doug, how do you know all this? And he’s like in his raspy voice. 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:21.000 Pete Meyer: I just know, you know, so it’s like, it was kind of cool. So we had confidence that, uh, that he could implement this pass and make it successful, um, because he knew what it took. So we… 00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:26.000 Stuart Winchester: I’m sorry to interrupt. I may have been the first ever Cabaret Redemption on the Indie Pass since November 2019. 00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:25.000 Pete Meyer: You know what? That’s this. 00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:30.000 Pete Meyer: It wasn’t, it was December 5th, 2019. 00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. It… 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:39.000 Pete Meyer: So, I was gonna get into that in a little bit, but now I’ll hit on that. So then, um, in digging through all these redemptions, which I was gonna get into. 00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:34.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, okay, go ahead. 00:48:37.000 --> 00:48:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Sorry, I spoiled it. 00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:56.000 Pete Meyer: And pouring this data, I was like, Stuart Winchester, you were redemption number one for us. I don’t know if you knew that. And I remember it to this day because I never heard your name. I never heard of your podcast. I don’t even know if you had it going then. 00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:42.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Wow, that’s cool. 00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Yah. 00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.000 Stuart Winchester: It launched, uh, that October, so it was brand new. Mm-hmm. 00:48:57.000 --> 00:48:59.000 Pete Meyer: That October? Okay. 00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:14.000 Pete Meyer: So the… our… my office is right behind the ticket window, and the ticket teller… our office… the ticket manager wasn’t in there, so the ticket teller came and got me when he came to the window. I have this, uh, IndiePass, I don’t know what to do with it. So I was showing her how to… 00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:18.000 Pete Meyer: redeem it in in Brooklyn. 00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:43.000 Pete Meyer: New York pops up. Oh, I got to talk to this guy. I go, you mean that you drove all the way here just to ski at Cabra Faith in Brooklyn, New York? And you’re like, yeah, I did. And I thought, I’m like, this pass is awesome, right? It’s great, guys. But then we talked a little bit more and you said you had family in the area and we’re in the area for a while. So I was really high for a long time on the UniPass because of that. But I didn’t know it was you until I was digging through the data. I’m like, oh, that’s. 00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so. 00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, that’s cool. 00:49:43.000 --> 00:49:58.000 Pete Meyer: That’s that’s so. So anyways, anyways, we’ll where was I? So okay, so then we were the first as part of that. Then we were the 1st ski resort in the Lower Peninsula to to commit to the to Indy Pass, and I’m not sure about. 00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Love that. 00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:01.000 Pete Meyer: Um, the UP, uh. 00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:16.000 Pete Meyer: But the only one in the Lower Peninsula. And so we knew at that time, well, this isn’t going to do anything unless we get a couple more ski resorts to join. So we had reached out to a few. And Pete Bigford was interested. And he was the CEO and president of Shanty Creek at the time. 00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:30.000 Pete Meyer: And Pete had said, yeah, we’ll do it, but we need a couple of downstate resorts to join as well. So then we reached out to Jamie at Swiss Valley, she said yes, and Doug at Cannonsburg, and he said yes. So that first year, we had four. 00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:33.000 Pete Meyer: Um, resorts on the Indy Pass. And… 00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:45.000 Pete Meyer: During that time he that 1st year he charged resorts a thousand dollars to get in. So we we had conversations. We’re like, well, let’s let’s try it. The worst we can do is be out a thousand dollars right? So we had these. 00:50:45.000 --> 00:51:00.000 Pete Meyer: 4 ski areas in, and we did… I think we did 44 redemptions that first year. It was… it was virtually nothing. I don’t even think it covered the… the $1,000. It might have come… but… but we liked the concept, it was neat, and the word got out, and then… and then Crystal Mountain joined, um, the next year. 00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow. Okay. 00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:06.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, and then, so we kind of hit a critical mass there, and then it was a really good pass, um. 00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:16.000 Pete Meyer: for a long time, for a while, for several years. And one thing that Doug had said, and during that first year, I think in 2019, they had about 50. 00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:32.000 Pete Meyer: ski resorts on the pass, if I remember. And he said, I really hope to get it to 80 to maybe 100 passes. Um, and you as an early adopter, um, Cabaret will have say who gets in, in, in your particular region, because I really want to keep it, do just a couple ski resorts per region. 00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:37.000 Pete Meyer: not to not to oversaturate the market. Like, yeah, great. This sounds sounds really good. 00:51:37.000 --> 00:51:40.000 Pete Meyer: So then as we go on, um… 00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:50.000 Pete Meyer: he sells the pass to, uh, Entebani and Eric. Um, and great for Doug, we’re happy for Doug, he worked really hard to make that pass, good for him for selling it. Um, can’t fault him. 00:51:50.000 --> 00:52:05.000 Pete Meyer: Um, and then we like to say, like, Eric, Eric took the pass and put it on steroids. You know, it’s just, he, he’s, he’s done a wonderful job with it. You know, he’s obviously very, very intelligent, very successful, running three different businesses, um, um, and doing well at all of them. 00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.000 Pete Meyer: But he’s blown it up. He just had a different mission. 00:52:09.000 --> 00:52:13.000 Pete Meyer: than than Doug had. Right? So what did that evolve into? 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Blowing it up, you mean making bigger, right? 00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:22.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, making it bigger. Like, Doug was gonna keep it small and couple to each region, and we were gonna have an input on, you know. 00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:35.000 Pete Meyer: to try to prevent it from being oversaturated. So, I know the Midwest has a lot of ski areas on the pass, but, like, our world is Michigan and our, more specifically, northern Michigan. 00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:38.000 Pete Meyer: So it got down to where we had 6. 00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:56.000 Pete Meyer: um, ski resorts within a 60-mile radius in northern Michigan, right? So if you drop a pin, you can drive within, within 60 miles, you can get to six resorts on it. Um, that density just became too much for us, because that’s 12 visits, right? If a skier buys an Andy Pass, they can ski 12 times, two at each place. It’s great for them, they get a lot of. 00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:52:57.000 --> 00:53:12.000 Pete Meyer: Um, the problem is, is what we’re seeing, and we’re watching the numbers every year, um, and it was easy to do because there’s not a ton of redemptions, but how many of those people were former Passovers, right? And that percentage kept rising every year. 00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmm. 00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:25.000 Pete Meyer: So what it became and evolved into is just a direct competitor of our own season pass product. And that’s ultimately reason number one why we — it just oversaturated. 00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:26.000 Pete Meyer: And. 00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.000 Stuart Winchester: So, go ahead. 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:28.000 Pete Meyer: And, you know, so… 00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:34.000 Pete Meyer: I and I think the the Indy Pass really for a lot of ski resorts. 00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:51.000 Pete Meyer: doesn’t move the needle a ton, um, financially. Uh, for… for us, it really didn’t, and I felt like we were… did a reasonable number of redemptions, so we could… we could take it… take it or leave it. It doesn’t have a big impact. It affects the customer more. Like, that decision was hard, the person who bought it in the past. 00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:56.000 Pete Meyer: Um, but I think Eric’s a stand-up guy. He’ll let anybody who… 00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:07.000 Pete Meyer: who bought an E-Pass, and their favorite resort is not on that, they’ll give a refund to anybody who wants one. So the Cabaret listeners know that, and I think that’s nice of him to do. Also, for those. 00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:19.000 Pete Meyer: um, Cabaret, uh, listeners who bought an Indy add-on. He’ll honor that for this year, from what I understand. So, it’s a couple of really good things that he’s doing there, so we’re thankful, thankful for that. But, um. 00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:28.000 Pete Meyer: through conversations, and we just decided it was time to get out. So that’s reason number one. I got a couple more reasons if you’ve got time. 00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Well, let’s linger on that for a second. I mean, for me, it just comes down to good old-fashioned free market competition, right? Where there’s another pass available that is looking for smaller mountains like Caber Fay. It also signed mountains like Buck Hill and. 00:54:41.000 --> 00:54:58.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and uh… Wild Mountain over in Minnesota, just small areas near populations that are popular. I saw you catching some heat in comments to me, you know, on my platforms and social media, because you go from the Indy Pass, which maxed out at $419. 00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:16.000 Stuart Winchester: to the full Icon, which is $1,449 right now, and I know you can upgrade and buy a discounted Icon session pass, but I don’t want to overstate it. What’s the reaction been like from your pass holders, and how have you handled that? 00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:24.000 Stuart Winchester: The fact that you’re no longer available on the cheap discounted pass, multi-mountain pass, but you are available on the very expensive one. 00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:27.000 Pete Meyer: Great question, great question, because we’ve been getting… 00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:42.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, we’ve been getting both, uh, good and, and bad feedback from it. So, what, what it comes down to is the, is the decision to, to, uh, leave Indy and, and join OCCON. Those, those decisions were, were mutually exclusive. Like, like, we had made the decision to. 00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:52.000 Pete Meyer: to leave Indy, um, before we even started to Icon. And we had a lot of conversations of, hey, let’s just… let’s just be… let’s just be independent and not on any… any, uh… 00:55:52.000 --> 00:56:08.000 Pete Meyer: Multi resort pass, you know, there’s a lot of really successful and really nice ski resorts that have that model, like Perfect North Slopes, Cascade in Wisconsin. We always go out and ski somewhere every spring and I went out to the Tahoe area this year and skied at Mount Rose, you know, that place is. 00:55:58.000 --> 00:55:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:56:01.000 --> 00:56:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:18.000 Pete Meyer: that place is phenomenal. They’re not on any, any, um, any pants. And, um, it was neat to ski there, and just see they had a similar vibe and feel that, um, Cabaret had, right? 00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:11.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. That’s right. 00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:23.000 Pete Meyer: So quite a bit more, quite a bit more. Yeah, yeah. 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:21.000 Stuart Winchester: Just a little more elevation. 00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:24.000 Stuart Winchester: They’re at, like, 9,000 feet. 00:56:23.000 --> 00:56:27.000 Pete Meyer: Absolutely, but it was great terrain. So. 00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:26.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:56:27.000 --> 00:56:29.000 Pete Meyer: After we left the Indy Pass. 00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:31.000 Pete Meyer: Then we, um… 00:56:31.000 --> 00:56:46.000 Pete Meyer: Started talking to the folks at ICON, and I want to give a shout out to Aaron Keene and Caitlin Windauer, those girls are really sharp and would answer all the questions. It kind of reminded me of the early DuckFish days where they were all knowing and knew a lot of answers to everything. 00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:53.000 Pete Meyer: We talked to them for a long time. We weren’t in any rush to make a decision to go down this road. 00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:57.000 Pete Meyer: And you know what ultimately decided for us is. 00:56:57.000 --> 00:57:10.000 Pete Meyer: We want to do what’s best for our core customer, and our core customer is our season pass holder, okay? And this IndyPass or this IconPass brought on this reciprocal benefit of a three-day. 00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:27.000 Pete Meyer: 3 day session pass you can get for 50% off. Right? And that adds a lot of value. To our pass holders. And so we’ve been hit as much as the negativity that you’ve seen online for leaving any pass, we’ve been getting messages from our pass holders saying, hey, thank you for this benefit. This is great. 00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:13.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s. 00:57:13.000 --> 00:57:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, three day. Yeah. Okay. 00:57:18.000 --> 00:57:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:57:27.000 --> 00:57:43.000 Pete Meyer: I’m gonna use it. I’m gonna take a trip. And then we’ve known we’ve gone out west together and 3 days of skiing is plenty. Like we like to ski bell to bell and it’s you’re by that 3rd day you’re waking up and you’re like you can’t even move your legs for you know we’re so so we think it’s a nice. 00:57:29.000 --> 00:57:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, yeah. 00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:57:43.000 --> 00:57:55.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, you can ski locally here, you can head up in, um, hit up, hit up both Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands, or drive over to, uh, Blue Mountain, Ontario, so you don’t have to get in a plane. So it’s. 00:57:55.000 --> 00:58:11.000 Pete Meyer: Uh, of our pass holders. Cause we know, we know, Stuart, that nobody’s going to buy a full icon pass for two days at Cabaret. We, we know that that wasn’t even the, like Pete said, we’re, we do like our independence and, and. 00:57:57.000 --> 00:57:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:58:03.000 --> 00:58:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:58:11.000 --> 00:58:25.000 Pete Meyer: And we like to create these partnerships that are good for our core customers. The people that commit to us, we’re going to give you the best we can. And so, you know, that that three day session pass is just it’s it’s. 00:58:25.000 --> 00:58:29.000 Pete Meyer: It’s a it’s a great benefit for our core customers. 00:58:29.000 --> 00:58:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it’s like you take a trip to Steamboat, or Palisades Tahoe, or a lot of the mountains that are on that. So, you know, it all makes sense, and I like the, you know, Boyne, Cabaret, sort of on one team, and then you have Nubs, and Crystal, and Treetops, and Shani on the other. I think that’s good for skiers, it’s good for. 00:58:47.000 --> 00:59:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, two more, two more things I wanna talk about and then we’ll get out of here. Uh, I, I really wanna talk about your season pass. $299 unlimited. I think it was even a little cheaper for early birds, but that’s what it is right now. Uh, 219 for weekday, 129 for Sunday. That, that’s an awesome, awesome deal. 00:59:03.000 --> 00:59:18.000 Stuart Winchester: by any measure. I noticed you no longer have the Saturday-Sunday pass, and I think it’s been a couple years, and it also… Saturday lift tickets are more than Sunday, so it seems as though, from my point of view, you’re really trying to manage the experience on Saturday. So, talk about your season pass suite. 00:59:18.000 --> 00:59:27.000 Stuart Winchester: And how that relates to your mountain management as far as making sure when people show up, they have a good experience. 00:59:27.000 --> 00:59:42.000 Pete Meyer: No, you’re exactly right. You hit the nail on the head right there. We’re trying to preserve the Saturday experience. That’s the day everybody wants to ski. So if you’re going to be on a pass and ski at Calgary on a pass, you got to have the seven-day week pass. 00:59:42.000 --> 01:00:00.000 Pete Meyer: And we wanted to protect that experience and not get overcrowded, not get overrun, and that’s one of the main reasons that we got rid of the weekend pass. The weekend pass, we roll out, it was a $99 weekend pass in 2007 when we launched that, and that thing went all the way till. 01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:14.000 Pete Meyer: I think 2000 or 2001, we had that, so we had that for a long time, and that brought a lot of skiers here and exposed us as we continued to get better, and they saw the resort that we had, and all the work that Tim was doing on the hill. 01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:21.000 Pete Meyer: And then that just evolved into trying to manage the volume levels on Saturdays. 01:00:21.000 --> 01:00:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it’s a, it’s, it’s a great deal. And, uh, you know, even, even as it’s risen past 99, I mean, you know, 299, there’s, there’s a lot of resorts in the West that are charging more than that for a day this year. Beaver Creek’s topping out at 392. So I love it. Okay. The last thing I want to. 01:00:38.000 --> 01:00:48.000 Stuart Winchester: This one’s a little personal, and I know I talked to you about this, uh, it was about 4 years ago, Tim or Pete, I forget, it was maybe both of you I was talking to. So I want to talk about this Trail Starkey. 01:00:48.000 --> 01:01:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, I knew Dick Starkey. I’m friends with his daughter Crystal from way back. We went to school together. Uh, and, and I met him and I, I was always just remember being very impressed by him. He had a really good presence. Uh, he was, he was very fit and active and, and did a lot of things. 01:01:03.000 --> 01:01:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Um, I didn’t know him super well, but I met him a few times, and… and I… I just want to talk about, you know, he passed. 01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Four or five years ago now, and I noticed this trail and, and I said, oh, is that, is that named after Dick? And, and you said it was. So, uh, can, can you talk about the Starkey trail? Talk about Dick Starkey and, and, uh, his legacy at Cabre Fay and, and, and why it was fitting to name a. 01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:34.000 Pete Meyer: Yeah, Dick was a volunteer patroller at SP, patroller at Caber Fay for… 01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:42.000 Pete Meyer: I think… I… I think as long as… as my dad was around, you know, uh, Dick was there, and so, you know. 01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:40.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:52.000 Pete Meyer: 40… however many years, 40… 40-some years, he was a patroller at Cabaret, and uh… you know, just had a big presence, you know, you knew him. 01:01:52.000 --> 01:01:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 01:01:52.000 --> 01:02:01.000 Pete Meyer: Played football at Ferris. Great stories about that. He was a captain and so he’s tough. 01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay. 01:02:01.000 --> 01:02:02.000 Pete Meyer: And. 01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:17.000 Pete Meyer: just a… just a great guy, great patroller, great mentor, um, a ton… lots and lots of stories about Dick Starkey for another day, but, uh, just somebody that we wanted to honor, and, um, so, you know, we made that change. 01:02:17.000 --> 01:02:21.000 Stuart Winchester: And why this trail? Why this, uh, why did you choose this one? 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:35.000 Pete Meyer: you know, that… I don’t… I don’t know why we picked that one. We just… we… we… I think we… the, um… the previous name was an old, you know, an older name that… that… that honored a… 01:02:35.000 --> 01:02:47.000 Pete Meyer: an older ski instructor, but I think we thought, you know, maybe… maybe it was time for a change there. Some… maybe just something a little more relevant to… someone more relevant to… 01:02:41.000 --> 01:02:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:52.000 Pete Meyer: You know, this this last, you know, 40 years of caprophage tradition. 01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. And, and I believe, I believe Crystal still, uh, volunteer patrols there as well, right? Yeah. 01:02:56.000 --> 01:02:59.000 Pete Meyer: Yes. Yes, she is. 01:02:57.000 --> 01:03:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that’s great. I haven’t talked to her in a minute, but hi, Crystal. Hope you’re doing great. Pete. 01:03:03.000 --> 01:03:05.000 Pete Meyer: No, no, not about the trail. 01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:22.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, okay, all right. Well, hey, listen, guys, I really appreciate catching up with you. There’s so much always going on at Cabaret, and we were long overdue, so let’s do it again soon, and I gotta get up there and ski that East Peak lift, because I haven’t been in a minute, so I really appreciate that, and I’ll talk to you guys soon, and thanks so much. 01:03:22.000 --> 01:03:25.000 Pete Meyer: Thanks, Stuart. Thanks a lot, Stu. Appreciate it. 01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:26.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, talk soon. 01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:28.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, let me just… 01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, that was Tim and Pete Meyer of Cabaret. I love Cabaret. It was my pseudo home mountain when I lived in Michigan. It was just 90 minutes down the road, so I never had a season pass there. 01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:51.000 Stuart Winchester: but I would go there a lot. I mean, and this was, you know, lift tickets were $20 or something back then, so it didn’t really matter, and they had a lot of specials. So, I want to… 01:03:51.000 --> 01:03:57.000 Stuart Winchester: wrap up today, I want to talk about lift tickets a little bit, because there’s some lift ticket deals going on. 01:03:57.000 --> 01:03:59.000 Stuart Winchester: And… 01:03:59.000 --> 01:04:14.000 Stuart Winchester: I’ll tell you about the deals first, and then I’ll, I’ll tell you what I make of them as a, as a theme. So we’re gonna focus on Colorado for a moment. So Arapahoe Basin, to celebrate its 80th anniversary, is doing $80 lift tickets every Wednesday. 01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:29.000 Stuart Winchester: from late December through April, except for December 30th, which is holiday week, of course. Uh, they are $50 on Wednesdays outside of those windows, so early season at A-Basin, and then late season, and of course, uh, the mountain typically goes until June. 01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:35.000 Stuart Winchester: $80 lift ticket today, based in on their anniversary weekend, Saturday and Sunday, December 5th and 6th. 01:04:35.000 --> 01:04:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Also, anyone born in 1946, making you 80 years old, skis free all winter. Uh, A-Basin has a lot of ways to get in cheap. They have 3-day packs. 01:04:45.000 --> 01:05:00.000 Stuart Winchester: With no blackouts, any day, use any 3 days for $249. They have midweek packs, 5 days for $319. Midweek season pass is $539, and a full is $699, and of course, A-Basin is unlimited on both the Icon and the Icon. 01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, base pass, and I wanna see… 01:05:03.000 --> 01:05:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, they did get rid of the fall pass. I had… 01:05:09.000 --> 01:05:21.000 Stuart Winchester: I had emailed, because… because A-Basin used to have this great pass for, like, 250 bucks. It was from opening day until Christmas, but they did get rid of it. Uh, and… and they… Shayna from A-Basin emailed, and she told me. 01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, for background, that was a very small audience for, for us who were interested in the Fall Pass pack. So, uh, so thank you, Shayna, for getting back to me so quickly, and I’d sent that right before the podcast started. So, so A-Basin deals on Wednesdays, you know, put that down in your. 01:05:37.000 --> 01:05:55.000 Stuart Winchester: List if you, if you wanna actually day ski and maybe you have an epic pass, but you wanna, you miss a basin. Uh, and then Thursdays Copper Mountain is again doing $99 Thursdays. They’re play for every Thursdays and a portion of that goes to a good cause. They’re doing that every Thursday from January 7th to April 8th. 01:05:55.000 --> 01:06:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Including the holiday week in February, I don’t know if that’s a mistake, but grab it while you can, because I don’t think they can take it back once you buy it. Uh, and then. 01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:05.000 Stuart Winchester: $99 a copper. 01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:19.000 Stuart Winchester: starting Monday, April 12th, which is pretty awesome. So, if you wanted to do a little day ski, and, you know, right now you can still buy tickets and everything, or still buy passes, because we’re recording this on September 17th. 01:06:19.000 --> 01:06:30.000 Stuart Winchester: But if you’re listening in the future, you could do a Wednesday $80 a day basin, a Thursday $99 at Copper Mountain. It’s not a bad couple days in Summit County for a pretty reasonable price, given. 01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:44.000 Stuart Winchester: prices in 2026 for lift tickets at most mountains. Uh, down the road, Aspen, for its 80th anniversary, is doing $80 lift tickets Saturday and Sunday, December 12th and 13th. They also offered… 01:06:44.000 --> 01:07:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, tickets for $3 and 75 cents for Monday, December 14th. But those are sold out and they, I’m pretty much sure they sold out instantly. And it’s funny ‘cause they didn’t even market it at first. And, and Aspen folks tell me they just blew off the shelves. So that is for Aspen’s 80th anniversary. 01:07:01.000 --> 01:07:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Same year as, uh, a basin is celebrating right now. And of course, some of the little guys around there, you know, ski Cooper hasn’t announced their lift ticket prices yet. And I know it’s small, but it’s still, it’s, it’s a place you can go. It’s high. There’s no snow making. It’s all natural snow. 01:07:17.000 --> 01:07:22.000 Stuart Winchester: $49 midweek tickets at Ski Cooper last year, maxed out at $99 on weekends. 01:07:22.000 --> 01:07:30.000 Stuart Winchester: Down the road, if you’re on your way to Aspen, Sunlight, which has 1,750 feet of vertical drop. 01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:46.000 Stuart Winchester: And two brand new lifts. Well, one was from a base and used, but it was only 20 years old. So they put in two brand new lifts last year. Big vertical. Uh, their lift tickets max out at $109. Midweek, they’re $74 to $94. It’s a fun little area. It gives you Colorado. 01:07:46.000 --> 01:07:53.000 Stuart Winchester: with a little bit more of a… a throwback Colorado, old Colorado feel. So, so the question here is. 01:07:53.000 --> 01:07:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Are we starting to see a rationalization? 01:07:57.000 --> 01:07:58.000 Stuart Winchester: In the lift ticket market. 01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:04.000 Stuart Winchester: Are we starting to see ski areas value the skier that. 01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:19.000 Stuart Winchester: maybe has an Icon Pass, but wants to ski another mountain for a day? Or I guess more in this case, since Copper and A-Basin are both Epic Pass mountains, are we seeing them take advantage of the fact that right now, if you look at prices for. 01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Breckenridge, it’s $153 to ski on Friday, November 6th. Who knows what they’ll have open? Probably not a lot. 01:08:27.000 --> 01:08:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, it’s 180 that day. Breckenridge goes over 300 for peak days. Uh, and on Monday, April 19th, as, as copper has dropped to 99, Breck right now is set to have a $179 walkup price for Monday, April 19th. So. 01:08:43.000 --> 01:08:49.000 Stuart Winchester: I think you’re seeing some smart reactions from some of the… 01:08:49.000 --> 01:08:55.000 Stuart Winchester: larger players and showing there’s still a competitive market in Colorado. The question is… 01:08:55.000 --> 01:09:07.000 Stuart Winchester: will Vail follow? In their earnings call, one of their earnings calls recently, uh, Rob Katz, or their end-of-year earnings, their CEO, Rob Katz, said that Lyft ticket sales had softened considerably. 01:09:07.000 --> 01:09:14.000 Stuart Winchester: To absolutely no one’s surprise, uh, because of the price of lift tickets. So, Ken Vale… 01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:27.000 Stuart Winchester: find a way in the softer seasons to start to compete, because it’s clear that their direct competitors are doing so. So let’s look at… I want to go… 01:09:28.000 --> 01:09:33.000 Stuart Winchester: to the Encyclopedia Britannica for a minute, and I want to give you some of these. 01:09:33.000 --> 01:09:41.000 Stuart Winchester: of these top lift ticket prices for the year. And, and I’ll tell you why I care about top lift ticket prices. And, and I know some of you say, well, it doesn’t matter. 01:09:41.000 --> 01:09:46.000 Stuart Winchester: I think it does matter, and I’ll tell you why. 01:09:46.000 --> 01:10:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Aspen’s peak lift ticket this year for any of the Four Mountains, or all of the Four Mountains, however you want to look at it, is $309. They used to keep pretty on par with Vail. Not anymore. Vail will hit $374. 01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Beaver Creek tops in the nation, probably the world $392 in some parts of the world that will get you on a helicopter. Like no joke. I hired a guide in Europe and this was several years ago, but we took one heli run and I think the day was, I don’t know, €250. 01:10:17.000 --> 01:10:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and then that also got us onto the resort for a guide for the rest of the day. So, so it, you know, 392, that’s, that’s something else. Uh, Steamboat will be 344. That’s an Alterra-owned mountain. Another Alterra flagship, Deer Valley, is 349. Vail flagship, Park City, is set to be 369. Again, these are peak day walk-up rates. 01:10:36.000 --> 01:10:49.000 Stuart Winchester: So we’re seeing these continue to rise around Colorado. I don’t think that that will change. I wish it would, but I don’t think it will. They’re busy enough at those times. We’re actually seeing a little softening in Tahoe. 01:10:49.000 --> 01:11:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And Vale didn’t, as far as I know, really promote this hard, but Heavenly, their top lift ticket last year was 3 0 5. They’ve knocked that to 2 84 and a big drop at North Star 3 29 was their top lift ticket rate last year. And that’s down. 01:11:04.000 --> 01:11:21.000 Stuart Winchester: So I think possibly we found the top of the market in Tahoe. In New England, Mount Snow, that’s Vail, $206. Killington, Independent, $225. Stratton, that’s Altera, $229. Okemo, $231. 01:11:21.000 --> 01:11:33.000 Stuart Winchester: And Stowe, Vail’s flagship in New England, $272. So, you’re probably saying, Stu, why do you care? We know you don’t pay these prices. No one listening to this podcast pays those prices. 01:11:33.000 --> 01:11:49.000 Stuart Winchester: But I don’t… and… and… trust me, the ski companies are frustrated that I talk about these prices. Why are you talking about a $392 lift ticket? There’s so many ways to get on Beaver Creek for cheaper. Well, because it’s a $392 lift ticket. And some people… 01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:54.000 Stuart Winchester: People don’t know that, and if they haven’t skied in. 01:11:54.000 --> 01:11:55.000 Stuart Winchester: A decade? 01:11:55.000 --> 01:12:09.000 Stuart Winchester: 15 years, and maybe their brother-in-law gets a place out in Vail, and suddenly they go up, and they say, okay, we’ll just get lift tickets when we get there, because that’s what they’ve done before. 01:12:09.000 --> 01:12:18.000 Stuart Winchester: And maybe they like skiing, but maybe they stepped away from it because they had kids, or they moved to a place where there wasn’t a lot of snow. And this is their chance… this is the chance to recapture them. 01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:29.000 Stuart Winchester: And I thought Jason Bay said it really well yesterday about Camelback, and I know Camelback is not Vail Mountain, but, you know, he would rather create a… a lifelong customer. 01:12:29.000 --> 01:12:32.000 Stuart Winchester: than a one-time customer. And I think that what you see… 01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:38.000 Stuart Winchester: with these really mega-huge lift ticket prices. So that’s just for one day. So imagine… 01:12:38.000 --> 01:12:44.000 Stuart Winchester: you’re a family of four, and you get out to Beaver Creek, and you’re gonna ski for a week, and you find out it’s gonna be $8,000. 01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:55.000 Stuart Winchester: for the 4U, it’s an idiot tax, or maybe an ignorance tax, right? I experienced this recently myself, because obviously I’m really tuned into skiing, but I rented a car in Ireland. 01:12:55.000 --> 01:13:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And I’ve rented cars all over the world, all over Europe, and I’ve always just said, oh, my credit card covers it. 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:14.000 Stuart Winchester: So I got to Ireland, and they have their own set of rules, which I should have researched, but again, it’s an idiot tax, and they said, uh, sorry, we need proof. 01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Your credit card covers this. 01:13:16.000 --> 01:13:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Or, it’s gonna be… I think it was another 45 euros a day, and we were there for, you know, a good 10-12 days. 01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:32.000 Stuart Winchester: So, I paid. I paid the idiot tax, because I didn’t want to go through the process of proving the credit card, which I didn’t even know how to do that, or if I could reach them. 01:13:32.000 --> 01:13:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And, you know, I learned my lesson. I feel kind of dumb, and I think that’s what ultimately ends up happening at skiing. I’ll never forget this experience I had at Steamboat in 2020. This was right before the shutdowns. 01:13:47.000 --> 01:14:02.000 Stuart Winchester: And I went into the ticket office. It’s right at the base of the gondola. Well, I don’t know if they’ve moved it around with all the stuff they’ve done, but it was at the base of the original gondola. I haven’t been back since Wild Blue was put in, but there was a ticket office right there, and I walked in, and. 01:14:02.000 --> 01:14:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Alpine slide tickets, because she just loves the Alpine slides, and we were done skiing for the day, and that stayed open a little bit later, and there was a big ticket board up. 01:14:10.000 --> 01:14:22.000 Stuart Winchester: and it gave you the prices for all of the lift tickets for one day, two day, three… and at the time, I mean, this seems quaint now, they were $200 and whatever dollars, so it was over $200. 01:14:22.000 --> 01:14:30.000 Stuart Winchester: And the… I’ve never seen a sadder line in my life. Like, the people just looked bereft. They just looked like… 01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:45.000 Stuart Winchester: why are we doing this? You could tell that they were somehow thrust into this situation, and they looked like dead people walking, and they looked like people who were probably going to vacation in the Florida Keys the following year, because they. 01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:50.000 Stuart Winchester: See those lift ticket prices, and if there’s no… 01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:55.000 Stuart Winchester: immediate notification that there’s a better way to do it. If there’s no way to buy the bigger pass. 01:14:55.000 --> 01:15:11.000 Stuart Winchester: I love Vail’s Turn Your Ticket program. I love that they’re reemphasizing it. I don’t think Icon has anything like that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it turns into a one time very frustrated experience. And, you know, any marketer will tell you people talk about their bad experiences. 01:15:11.000 --> 01:15:18.000 Stuart Winchester: much more than their good experiences. So I think the lift ticket market is out of control. 01:15:18.000 --> 01:15:33.000 Stuart Winchester: I hope that there is a market correction happening. I don’t have enough confidence to say that right now, but I can say that, unlike in some of the previous years, there are deals out there, even in the heart of ski country. 01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:35.000 Stuart Winchester: In Summit County. 01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:53.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, this podcast is brought to you today by Profile Search. A lot of you come to this podcast to hear from the best minds in skiing. But what if you want to find one of these great leaders for your own mountain team? Well, you should call Profile Search International, the ski industry talent acquisition experts. 01:15:53.000 --> 01:15:59.000 Stuart Winchester: The only executive search and recruitment firm in the world that is 100% focused on the ski industry. 01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Profile searches use their intimate understanding of skiing and related industries and of available candidates worldwide to place hundreds of transformational leaders at the best and most progressive ski areas over the past 30 years. 01:16:12.000 --> 01:16:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Profile search has offices in the US and Canada. They find and negotiate with the right leaders for your team. 01:16:18.000 --> 01:16:31.000 Stuart Winchester: You can reach out to Profile Search directly at profilesearch.com, or contact them by email or phone, or send me a note at skiing at substack.com. My email is skiing at substack.com. 01:16:31.000 --> 01:16:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Might go to spam, I might miss it, but I will try to check my spam folder, and connect you directly with this expert team. 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:41.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, this is where I would normally… 01:16:42.000 --> 01:16:54.000 Stuart Winchester: look at feedback from readers on yesterday’s podcast, but I put it out really late, so I don’t know how much feedback I’m gonna have, because sometimes these interviews are just in the evening, so… 01:16:54.000 --> 01:16:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Let’s see if there’s any comments. There must be a better way to get to the comments. Okay. 01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, this is from Gustav, longtime paid subscriber. I love that Camelback is pushing their season length. Every region or sub region needs a place like that for the ski community to congregate in the spring. I, I totally agree. And it’s great that the Mid-Atlantic. 01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Has that and they’re being aggressive about it. Camelback has a little elevation to help them out. 01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:35.000 Stuart Winchester: In the Midwest, you see Lutzen and Granite Peak will sometimes operate into May, but Boyne Mountain has really been pushing it. They sometimes have a competition with, uh, with Mount Bohemia, which has no snow making, which is funny ‘cause Boyne has like the best snow making and to see who can close the latest. 01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:50.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, up in New England, you have Black Mountain, improbably has come up in New Hampshire, and Mogensen has been on the podcast recently, and even though it faces south and has a low elevation, he’s been keeping Black Mountain open into May for the past couple of years, and of course. 01:17:50.000 --> 01:18:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, Killington, Sugarbush, and Jay Peak always stay open pretty late in Vermont, and uh… and Jay Peak’s been pushing it the last couple years into mid… mid-May, and… and Killington will go to June when they can. 01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, which I don’t think they did this year. Uh, anyway, then out west, you, you have the obvious players. You have A-Basin, you have Snowbird, you have Mammoth, you have Palisades Tahoe, uh, you sometimes get Crystal up in, up in, uh, Washington. 01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:26.000 Stuart Winchester: And Bachelor will go late in the ski areas in Mount Hood. Of course, not a lot of good late operators. You know who needs a late operator? 01:18:26.000 --> 01:18:31.000 Stuart Winchester: is, like, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. 01:18:31.000 --> 01:18:39.000 Stuart Winchester: I know that Wyoming has that Beartooth Basin ski area that opens, but am I missing any? Because I don’t think anyone goes for May. 01:18:39.000 --> 01:18:47.000 Stuart Winchester: And Big Sky told me a few years ago they were gonna start trying to go for May, but I… have not seen them do that yet. 01:18:47.000 --> 01:18:56.000 Stuart Winchester: Anyway, this is getting too long, and my editor is going to scold me severely. So, I am going to wrap up the show for today. 01:18:56.000 --> 01:19:11.000 Stuart Winchester: The next show will be tomorrow, it will be the Ask Me Anything, so if you’ve not gotten your questions in yet, please get them over to me. If you are a paid subscriber, that is who I’m reading the questions from. And I’ve got some pretty good questions so far, but I wouldn’t mind a couple more. 01:19:11.000 --> 01:19:17.000 Stuart Winchester: For more content to get all of the Storm’s updates, reading, writing, podcasts. 01:19:17.000 --> 01:19:32.000 Stuart Winchester: as soon as they’re out, please go to StormSkiing.com, subscribe to the Storm Skiing newsletter, and the very best way to support independent ski journalism is to upgrade to a paid subscription at StormSkiing.com, which will give you the ability to interact with this podcast, and…. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

   September 17, 2026·58min
   Play
3. 3
   Number 3: Storm News 9/8/2026: Smuggs Joins Indy, Joe Hession Talks Snow Pass, New Pod Format

   Welcome to the Storm’s short-form, news-focused podcast. Don’t worry, I will still write newsletters too. To browse a podcast transcript, click the “transcript” button above - click on any block of text and the audio will jump to that point in the conversation. Paid subscribers can leave a comment below - I’ll respond to some in the next episode. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism. /: The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, which will zoom to any point in the video when you click on the associated text block; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO) 00:01:51.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the Storm! It is September 8th, 2026, and if you are a Storm regular, you are probably wondering what in the heck is going on here. 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Today, we are launching an all-new format for the Storm Skiing Podcast. 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:22.000 Stuart Winchester: It is shorter, it is news-focused, it will be more frequent, and it will publish the same day that I record it in just about every instance. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:23.000 Stuart Winchester: So. 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s gonna have a lot of different elements. Uh, takes just… 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:31.000 Stuart Winchester: on whatever’s happening in the news. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, let’s scrap that and let’s start again. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, starting from the top. 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:42.000 Stuart Winchester: 3. 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:44.000 Stuart Winchester: Q. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:45.000 Stuart Winchester: One. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. It is September 8th, 2026, and I would like to welcome you all to a brand new version of the Storm Skiing Podcast. 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:02.000 Stuart Winchester: So, the long-form podcast… 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:09.000 Stuart Winchester: has been the default of the Storm Skiing Podcast since I launched in 2019. 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Very proud of the Storm Skiing podcast. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:16.000 Stuart Winchester: We’re at episode 227. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:26.000 Stuart Winchester: I have interviewed the leaders of nearly every large ski area in America, and the leaders of most of the large ski companies in America. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:29.000 Stuart Winchester: But something started to feel a little bit off. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:35.000 Stuart Winchester: And, you know, I started to think about the kind of podcasts that I consume. 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:44.000 Stuart Winchester: And those are mostly, frankly, around Michigan football, uh, which is my other obsession besides ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-s. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:04:02.000 Stuart Winchester: tend to be much more news-focused. They tend to be much shorter than the Storm Skiing Podcast. They tend to publish the same day that they record them, and they tend to break down current events. For example, I just went to a Michigan football game. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:21.000 Stuart Winchester: on Saturday in Ann Arbor. If you’re even remotely a sports fan, you probably saw the controversial ending to that game when Michigan got an extra second added on, and Bryce Underwood, the quarterback, tossed a Hail Mary to win the game when JJ Buchanan, our transfer receiver, came down with the ball. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:36.000 Stuart Winchester: That’s never happened in the history of Michigan football, to have a Hail Mary ending that Michigan wins. So, on the way home, it’s a 10-hour drive back to New York, my wife and I listened to all the different Michigan podcasts that were breaking down that moment. And I realized that… 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:54.000 Stuart Winchester: as much as I like the Storm Skiing Podcast, and as much as a lot of other people like it, I was not really making the kind of podcast that I actually listen to. And that’s a problem, because in our current media environment, people have a lot of choice. 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:58.000 Stuart Winchester: They have a lot of of. 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:13.000 Stuart Winchester: different things they can give their attention to, and it’s hard to get and keep their attention. So, I want to say right off, I am not killing the long-form storm skiing podcast. It will not end with episode 227. In fact, I have about 5 or 6 in the can that I’ve been sitting on. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Stuart Winchester: for this news, and I will release those soon, and my thanks to the folks who participated in those podcasts for their everlasting patience as I got this together. So, I’m still gonna make the Storm Skiing Podcast. The frequency will go from about 45 a year at its peak. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:47.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s probably about a dozen a year or so, and sometimes there will just be a time when the long form is the more appropriate form for telling the story of a mountain. If I have someone new on, for example, so for example, I’ve never had. 00:05:47.000 --> 00:06:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, the GM or owner of Sierra at Tahoe in California, an important mountain on the podcast. Never had Wolf Creek on the podcast, never had Mount Baker. If I were to get one of those folks, I would want to do a long form, tell the story of the ski area. But it’s not always necessary to. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Tell the entire story of the ski area and its history and its culture when you just want to talk about a new lift or you just want to talk about the fact that it joined a new pass. So this shorter podcast will be more frequent. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Stuart Winchester: It will have different segments, segments with takes when I just talk about what’s going on. It will still have interviews, much shorter interviews. Today we have an interview with an awesome guest, Snow Partner CEO Joe Heschen, one of the smartest guys in skiing. 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:45.000 Stuart Winchester: But before, Joe and I went on for two hours. This time, we’ll be able to condense it down. And then at the end of each episode, my intent. 00:06:45.000 --> 00:07:02.000 Stuart Winchester: and hope is to have reader interaction, and this will be a feature available only to paid supporters of the Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast, and you can upgrade to a paid subscription at stormskiing.com anytime. The podcast will be for everyone, as it’s always been. 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:18.000 Stuart Winchester: But only paid subscribers will be able to interact with the podcast. And the way that they will be able to do that is that they will be able to write a comment on the article that accompanies the newsletter on stormskiing.com. 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:32.000 Stuart Winchester: And the next day, I will read some of those comments and react to them as appropriate. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that later and why I’m doing it that way. But for now, I want to assure you. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:48.000 Stuart Winchester: This podcast is going to come to you the same way your podcasts always have. Now, there is a video version. You can watch that on YouTube, will be our primary channel, as well as Substack, which is where the newsletter is published. There will always, always, always be an audio version. 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:58.000 Stuart Winchester: And it will always come to the same places that you have always gotten the podcast. If that’s Apple, if that’s Spotify, there’s some that I don’t even know. 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:11.000 Stuart Winchester: how the podcast got on there, or why it’s on there. There’s an RSS feed that spits this out from Substack. That will not change. The storm will be… when you go looking for it, you’re going to find the storm. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:13.000 Stuart Winchester: So. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:24.000 Stuart Winchester: This is something I’m super excited about because I think it will allow me to have a lot more guests a lot more often. 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:35.000 Stuart Winchester: there are so many great minds in skiing right now, and I feel like there’s a lot of negative sentiment around skiing and the way it’s evolving. There’s a lot of talk of a duopoly. 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.000 Stuart Winchester: But from my point of view. 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:54.000 Stuart Winchester: there’s not a duopoly in a way that is dominating all consumer choice. And the reason I have that point of view is I’m having conversations every single day with smart people. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:10.000 Stuart Winchester: thinking far ahead and doing great things to change skiing in ways that make skiing better, that make skiing access better. People like Joe Hesham, my guest today, people like Eric Mogenson, who runs the Indy Pass, people like John Schaefer, who runs a handful of mountains. 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:28.000 Stuart Winchester: in the East, people like Rick Schmitz, who runs three ski areas in the Midwest. Small ski area operators like Tim Meyer at Caber Fay in Michigan, who we’ll talk about a little bit later. So, I’m talking to these people all the time, and I’m seeing the independent ski areas are really, for the most part, doing fine. I’m seeing. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:33.000 Stuart Winchester: Huge investment. I’m seeing huge innovation and. 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Because of the frequency of the podcast, and because of the laborious nature of turning interviews into written content. 00:09:43.000 --> 00:10:00.000 Stuart Winchester: I don’t think that I’m getting that to you in the way that I would like, in, in, in the way that you deserve. I want you to be part of this conversation. I want you to see why I’m so optimistic about skiing right now. I want you to know why I feel that skiing is in its best. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:05.000 Stuart Winchester: place, historically, that it has ever been, at least in America. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Now, it certainly has problems, and we will get into those as well. 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:21.000 Stuart Winchester: I don’t answer to anyone. I don’t answer to the operators. I don’t have a boss. I answer to my subscribers, and that’s it. The only thing I care about is the truth. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:28.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, and my optimism does not come from any desire to have access or anything else. My… my… 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:31.000 Stuart Winchester: My content and my commitment to the truth. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:50.000 Stuart Winchester: comes from wanting to deliver a great journalistic product. Uh, and there’s gonna be opinion and analysis. You’re not always going to agree with what I say, and that’s good! I wanna remind people that. That’s good. If you agree with everything I say, I have no value. I can tell you that all of my guests. 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:54.000 Stuart Winchester: disagree with things I say, but the reason they keep coming back. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:03.000 Stuart Winchester: And the reason that I hope they will keep coming back is because I’m trying to be fair, I’m trying to work within the bounds of the truth, and I’m not… 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Jumping to these huge accusatory. 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:25.000 Stuart Winchester: narratives that we see so often with the Mega Passes and with the big consolidators, Vale and Altera. So, I want to give a different perspective, I want to give it more frequently. The newsletter, one more point, the newsletter will stay the same. There will always be written content. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:34.000 Stuart Winchester: I am still a writer with a podcast, not a podcaster with a newsletter, though I kind of have to admit at this point that I am. 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:42.000 Stuart Winchester: a podcaster, even though that sounds… I don’t know, it sounds a little… pretentious, or juvenile, or uh… like I’m… 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:58.000 Stuart Winchester: you know, doing this as a side hustle while I drive for Uber, but… but no, this is my full-time job. The Storm is and has been my full-time job for a couple of years. Now, the reason I want to switch to a news-based podcast is for days like today, because today we have. 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Huge news. 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.000 Stuart Winchester: One of my favorite ski areas. 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:09.000 Stuart Winchester: One of the best ski areas in the eastern United States. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, depending on your point of view, maybe one of the best ski areas in the United States. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.000 Stuart Winchester: is joining a Malta Mountain Pass for the first time. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:27.000 Stuart Winchester: That is Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont. Smuggs is an incredible place. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:40.000 Stuart Winchester: For a lot of reasons. Number one, if you don’t live in the East, and you’re under the impression that the East is an ice ball, and the vertical drops are short, and the mountains are small. 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:56.000 Stuart Winchester: You’re wrong. You’re just wrong. And there is a snow. There’s plenty of big mountains in the east. First of all, there’s plenty of good snow pockets in the east. One of the best snow pockets is in northern Vermont, and you have a line of resorts. 00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:12.000 Stuart Winchester: We call it the spine of the Green Mountains. Starts at Killington Pico, goes up to Sugarbush, which is in Alterra Mountain. Right next door is Mad River Glen, the famous Indy with the single chair. North of that is Bolton Valley, which is on Indy Pass. North of that is Stowe, which is owned by V. 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:23.000 Stuart Winchester: On the backside of Stowe is Smuggler’s Notch, and then north of that is Jay Peak. Smuggler’s Notch joins IndyPass today, and here are the stats. 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:39.000 Stuart Winchester: It is a 2610 foot vertical drop that is the fourth tallest in the east. It has one smug says 1060 skiable acres that they claim there’s actually more in the woods. If you count the back bowls and some of the secret stashes. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Off of the Sterling lift. So that makes it the fourth largest ski area in the east. It is the second snowiest ski area in the east after Jay Peak, which is also an IndyPass partner with 322in of snowfall. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:14:10.000 Stuart Winchester: On average per winter. Yes, that’s a lot. That’s those are Vail numbers. Those are Colorado numbers. No, it’s not Cottonwoods, but it’s deep enough that those ski areas almost always have tree skiing from the beginning. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:22.000 Stuart Winchester: from around Christmas through the end of the season. I’ve skied Glades at Stowe in April many times. I’ve done the same at Jay Peak. So, the snow coverage really. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:38.000 Stuart Winchester: comes and it really falls. Mount Mansfield, which is where Stowe is, right next to Smuggs, is the tallest mountain in Vermont, and they have a snow stake there that consistently builds up to around 60 inches or so for the season. So, Smuggs joins Indy Pass. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:56.000 Stuart Winchester: today. It is the… and, and, and, and… No Blackouts on Indie Bass Pass, which goes on sale today to the general public, or actually maybe tomorrow it goes on sale, for… $419. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:57.000 Stuart Winchester: The ND… 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Plus is 469. So I’ll give you a few stats here. So Indy with adding smugs, that is the 43rd Alpine lift serve ski area that Indy has added for the 2026 to 2027. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Winter. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:30.000 Stuart Winchester: That gives them a total. Now, my totals are going to be a little different than Indy’s because they’re counting cross-country ski areas. And I’m leaving those off. And I also count sometimes two ski areas, as one when they’re when they’re separate entities. But but they share days. 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:45.000 Stuart Winchester: So Indy now has 256 ski areas, lift-served alpine downhill ski areas, which get two days each. So they have more than you could possibly use. That includes 148 ski areas in the United States. 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:57.000 Stuart Winchester: 32 in Canada, 39 in Europe, and 32 in Japan. You can ski 30% of all ski areas in America on Indy. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:14.000 Stuart Winchester: Now, on the flip side, Indy also had some important losses this winter. They lost, and they’re all in the Midwest, and Indy’s lost mountains before, and with a roster that big, you’re gonna have some turnover. Uh, but the first wave of losses came back. 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:24.000 Stuart Winchester: in past release season in March, when the three areas owned by Midwest Family Ski Resorts, some of the best operators in the country, uh, they own Lutzen Mountain in Minnesota. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:39.000 Stuart Winchester: one of the largest ski areas in the Midwest, uh, Granite Peak in Wisconsin, which has 3 high-speed lifts, and Snow River, which is really 2 side-by-side ski areas and a nice snow belt in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They left for Icon Pass. 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Now, there’s a little bit of a historical precedent there, because those three ski areas had been on the Max Pass, which had been the immediate predecessor, along with the Rocky Mountain Super Pass, to the Icon Pass. Uh, the… 00:16:53.000 --> 00:17:10.000 Stuart Winchester: Icon Pass, when it debuted in 2018, left off Snow River, Granite Peak, and Lutzen. And I always thought, well, Snow River wasn’t a part of Midwest Family at the time, but I always thought that was a mistake. So I’m not surprised to see them go, but those were big drivers of Indy Pass sales. 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Because those are marquee mountains in the Midwest. They also recently lost… 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:34.000 Stuart Winchester: Another three mountains run by another great operator in Wisconsin, Little Switzerland, Crystal Ridge, and Nordic Mountain. Now, these are small ski areas. They’re feeder ski areas, but they’re important ski areas because Rick is a very smart guy. He’s very influential. 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:50.000 Stuart Winchester: And he has a lot of influence in the ski business, including being part of the board of directors of the National Skiers Association. Everyone respects him. They also lost Cabar Fay, one of my favorite mountains in Michigan. It was my pseudo-home mountain when I lived in Michigan as a teenager. 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:57.000 Stuart Winchester: I have a lot of respect for Tim and Pete Meyer, who run that over there. So, I’ll talk a little bit more… 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:10.000 Stuart Winchester: about that with Joe, because I think there’s going to be some crossover with the snow pass. So, quickly, before we get to our guest, I want to tell you about Profile Search International. 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:15.000 Stuart Winchester: A lot of you come to this podcast to hear from the best minds in skiing. 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:20.000 Stuart Winchester: But what if you want to find one of these great leaders for your own mountain team? 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:35.000 Stuart Winchester: Well, let me introduce you to the folks at Profile Search International. They are the ski industry talent acquisition experts, and are the only executive search and recruitment firm in the world that is 100% focused on the ski industry. 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:48.000 Stuart Winchester: They have used their intimate understanding of skiing and related industries and available candidates worldwide to place hundreds of transformational leaders at the best and most progressive ski areas over the past 30 years. 00:18:48.000 --> 00:19:04.000 Stuart Winchester: With offices in the US and Canada, Profile Search finds and negotiates with the right leaders for your team. You can reach out to them directly at profilesearch.com or contact them by email or phone, or send me a note and I will connect you directly with their expert team. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:11.000 Stuart Winchester: We are joined. 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:13.000 Stuart Winchester: As soon as we get a video. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:33.000 Stuart Winchester: We are joined today by the founder and CEO of Snow Partners, which owns and operates the Mountain Creek Outdoor Ski Area and the Big Snow American Dream Indoor Ski Areas in New Jersey. Snow Partners’ terrain-based learning program has been used by more than 80 ski resorts worldwide. 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:50.000 Stuart Winchester: And the company has rolled out its SnowCloud all-in-one resort management software with at least 15 clients, including Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Last year, the company launched the Snow Triple Play Pass, which was good for 3 days, total across 16 ski areas in eastern North America. 00:19:50.000 --> 00:20:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Ahead of Winter 2026-27, Triple Play adds 7 additional mountains, for a total of 23, at a price of $179. 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Snow Partners has also launched the Snow Pass, which is loaded with two days each at 14 ski areas for $339.99. My guest to break all this down for us today is a good friend of the Storm Skiing Podcast, Joe Heschen. Joe, welcome back to the storm. Always good to track you down. 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:18.000 Joe Hession: Thanks. 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:21.000 Stuart Winchester: How are you feeling on Snow Pass launch day? 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:36.000 Joe Hession: You know, it’s launch day for Snow Pass. It’s launch day for Mountain Creek Seasons Passes. So winter’s in the air. Things are happening. It’s really exciting. This is probably my favorite time of year. So thanks for having me on such a special day. Winter’s coming. 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.000 Stuart Winchester: I’ll do it. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and it’s the first day of the new platform for the Storm. So I wanted to get you on first. I’ll admit, I want to do a little bit of a flex because I know you’re a hard guy to track down and you’re doing a lot of cool, interesting things. I want to start with the Snowpass, Joe, because you came on the podcast last year to talk about Snow Triple Play. 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:56.000 Stuart Winchester: And your launch, and you were pretty… 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:55.000 Joe Hession: Mm-hmm. 00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:09.000 Stuart Winchester: adamant, you know, this is not a pass. I don’t want to do a pass. And, you know, we talked about it a lot, and I probably harassed you about it a little bit, and now we have a pass! 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:01.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:05.000 Joe Hession: Mm-hmm. 00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:17.000 Stuart Winchester: So, so tell us about that journey. How did, how did we get from TriplePlay to SnowPass, and, and why do you have the two different products? 00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:10.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:32.000 Joe Hession: Yeah. And, and, you know, you might be very responsible for it because you, you pushed it early on of, you know, why, why would this not be a pass? And, you know, originally we were really following the data and the data we were really focused on was 73% of people ski between one and five days. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:50.000 Joe Hession: the price point for that, and we were looking at the data for Mountain Creek with our triple play, and saying, you know, there’s really not a lot of triple plays for multi-resort. That’s kind of a cool, unique concept. So we were really stuck on the data. Obviously, we heard feedback from folks like yourself, and also your other… all your listeners and subscribers, and… 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:21:50.000 --> 00:22:05.000 Joe Hession: And… but then, it was really our past partners. The people that bought the Triple Play were like, if we had this option, we’d be really happy. They hit us that in our post-survey, they said, we really would like this. Um, and then the resorts. We had great partners on the Triple Play program, and… 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:13.000 Joe Hession: they came in and said, we would like this as well. So, you know, the model’s been done, and we made the leap to do it. So we’re really excited about it. 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:28.000 Stuart Winchester: You have a great network to launch, and I think especially if you live in New York Metro, and I want to talk about — I do want to talk about Triple Play, but let’s focus on Snowpass for a minute. The three key mountains here are Bel Air, Gore, and Whiteface. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:43.000 Stuart Winchester: These mountains, for those of us who are in the area, we know they’re state subsidized. They’ve gotten a half billion dollars in investment. That’s a whole different subject. We’re going to leave that alone because the result of that for your pass holders is these are awesome ski areas. Bel Air is essentially a brand new ski area. 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:58.000 Stuart Winchester: And if you’re in New York Metro, you get two days at Mountain Creek, and you get two days at Big Snow, then there’s some little ones. You get up in Connecticut, you have Mount Southington. So you have a really nice network of. 00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:10.000 Stuart Winchester: 14 ski areas, 12 of them are in the east. Talk about that network, Joe, and how deliberate it was that they kind of worked together to create a compelling pass product. 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:27.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, that’s a great question because that is, you know, we probably look at the world a little differently than people looking at different passes and different programs. And I think you nailed it. Like, you know, with the news last week, you know, sometimes people from Colorado chirp and they, this pass doesn’t make sense for me. I’m like, yeah. 00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:44.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, congratulations. You can read and understand basic logic. So we love our friends in Colorado, we love our friends out west, but this is a pass that’s very regional. It makes so much sense if you live in this area and you’re planning to have those trips and, and, and you might remember this, but years ago. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:32.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:24:00.000 Joe Hession: at the NSA show, which is the National Ski Association. I was on stage with a bunch of different groups, talking about Epic Pass and ICOM Pass, and this is before we had a Pass product. And I was saying, and I was a little critical too. 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:18.000 Joe Hession: you know, listen, I think the high-level past products that exist, which just throw out big numbers, like, you know, 40 of these resorts, these resorts, or 300 resorts, like, it’s cool, but the reality is, is I’m really focused on how does someone actually use it? So if we go back to the skier. 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:35.000 Joe Hession: and the snowboarder, and how do they actually use this pass? And, you know, back in the day, and I love, you know, the industry is much smaller than people, especially your listeners might realize, like, I have a ton of respect for almost everybody. If anyone’s in this business, I respect them, because it’s a really hard business. 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:36.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:51.000 Joe Hession: And so for us, I’ve always looked at it and said these big pass products that are kind of like overwhelming with the options, like how do people actually use them and where does it drive traffic and traffic to the right places at the right time and stuff like that. So we’re very deliberate. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:25:02.000 Joe Hession: very deliberate in, if you live in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Long Island, um, upstate New York, parts of Pennsylvania, this is a very compelling pass that not only takes you from the city. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:18.000 Joe Hession: Because for us, what’s really critical is that kind of warm handshake from, we’re teaching a hundred thousand new people a year to ski at Big Snow. Where do they then go to? And obviously we want them to come to Mountain Creek, but I also want them to go to Whiteface and Bel Air and Gore and Platic Hill. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:34.000 Joe Hession: Um, because things like that, that’s kind of how this industry can work together to take people who are new to the sport, or people who are, maybe have never gone. Maybe they always go to Vermont, and we love Vermont, but maybe this is their chance to go up to Whiteface and realize, oh, wow. 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:41.000 Joe Hession: That’s, you know, you can see JP from there, right? So it’s kind of it’s people don’t realize how far north Whiteface is. 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:37.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:49.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so you have a really nice network, and I think it’s gonna sell really well. I mean, just even if… even if you just launched. 00:25:49.000 --> 00:26:05.000 Stuart Winchester: a Bel Air Gore Whiteface pass at that price point, I think it would probably sell really well. Uh, but the reality is you’re going up against a very competitive market. So, uh, you look at Epic Pass, not maybe so competitive, you’re doing something different, they don’t have as many mountains in the market. Indy Pass. 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:20.000 Stuart Winchester: I’m not even sure if you know this yet, because the embargo literally lifted when we started this at 10 a.m. eastern. A smuggler’s notch today announced they are joining the Indy Pass. So the Indy Pass gives you a really nice network of resorts in your neighborhood. 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:14.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:34.000 Stuart Winchester: In New England, it has Waterville Valley, Cannon, Jay Peak, Saddleback, and now Smug, some of the best ski areas in the region. It has ski areas all over New York. That goes on sale to the public. 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:50.000 Stuart Winchester: Today or tomorrow, the Indy Pass, they do a fall sale for $419. They have 256 alpine ski areas as of today, including 61 in the western US. They have a big head start, right? They started in 2019, so. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:27:04.000 Stuart Winchester: you’re offering a different product, but it works in the same way, right? SnowPass. Uh, little lower price point, $340 as opposed to $419. What’s your pitch for someone considering SnowPass or IndyPass? 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:20.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, so, well, well, first let me hit that because it’s, it’s, what’s interesting is, and, and it’s important to kind of explain our background and where we come from. I probably see the world differently than almost everyone involved in this past world. I, I kind of look at it as. 00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:35.000 Joe Hession: you know, the pitch is, if you live in this area and you want to visit the resorts on our pass, it’s a no-brainer. Not only that, I don’t think we’re going to live in a world where there’s Epic, Icon, Indy, Snow Pass, Mountain Collective. 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:53.000 Joe Hession: I think we should be trying to live in a world where we democratize skiing back to the skiers and snowboarders, and allow them to make choices in their price points where they want to go, vastly different than it is today. I think these programs, um, really exist because lack of good technology. 00:27:53.000 --> 00:28:08.000 Joe Hession: Like, like, basically, we would have reciprocal programs back years ago with, uh, like, Mound Creek and Killington. And to get that to actually make sense to the guests, where they show up, and it’s seamless, and the money’s able to be traded the right way, wasn’t possible years ago. 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:24.000 Joe Hession: So, for us, you know, and I’ll get to the question of what the pitch directly to Indy, but I see the world so dramatically different than IndyPass. I see a world where independent ski resorts should be working with each other. 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:43.000 Joe Hession: for the betterment of their guests to share people to different locations that people find interesting. A real-life example is Martok in Nova Scotia and Cape Smoky have a reciprocal program that they’re actually allowed to have… they have one pass that’s able to work at both places and can split the revenue and funding between it. 00:28:43.000 --> 00:29:00.000 Joe Hession: between them. They have common ownership. But they’re both on SnowCloud. So really, you know, our software platform, SnowCloud, which really operates all the things that is involved with Snowpass and Snow TriplePlay, our real pitch long-term, our real pitch of what we’re trying to do with Snowpass. 00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:46.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:17.000 Joe Hession: is open up the door to give resort leaders and operators tools where they take out the middleman. And what I mean by the middleman is Wachusett and a resort up in Vermont doesn’t need a third party to organize their pass benefits. 00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:33.000 Joe Hession: They should be doing it directly themselves, using better technology. So, I am calling for a shift, a big shift, in the way that people think of this, of, let’s get away from these big, pillar, clunky things that are these big, like. 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:46.000 Joe Hession: big, like, kind of ego plays of passes, and let’s take skiing back to the skiers and snowboarders, and let them have direct relationships with the resorts they love, and give these operators great tools to allow that to happen. 00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:38.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:50.000 Joe Hession: Um, so that that’s our long term pitch. Yeah. 00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:56.000 Stuart Winchester: So let me jump in there. I just want to ask now, I want to follow up on that. So are you saying this snow pass, your goal is to… 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:01.000 Stuart Winchester: make it extinct at some point? It’s a building block to the next level, is that what you’re saying? 00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.000 Joe Hession: Yeah. 00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:01.000 Joe Hession: You… 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:17.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, what’s interesting is Snowpass, we have no upside in Snowpass. So we’ve been very open and clear about this. And I just want to make sure the goal of Snowpass is secure. We share all of our books openly with all of our resort partners. They can see every transaction, every dollar flow. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:33.000 Joe Hession: There’s overhead in some of the expenses. They get a clear, like, this is the piece that we do that. We originally said it was estimated at 5%. If it ends up becoming 3%, we’ll distribute the rest of that to the resorts. We have no profit margin built into our plan for Snowpass. 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:43.000 Joe Hession: Snowpass to us is the first step in trying to prove the theory of could we remove the middleman from the equation? 00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:58.000 Joe Hession: And we applaud the idea that if you’re on Snowpass, and let’s say that Whiteface wants to now work with Platykill directly, we would celebrate that and see that as a huge win. 00:30:58.000 --> 00:30:59.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:14.000 Joe Hession: Because we want resorts to collaborate. If people are real fans of skiing and snowboarding, and they’ve been buying passes for years, and part of it, they know that the beauty of the ski industry is when the ski industry, skiers, snowboarders, the people that operate these resorts, work together. 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:26.000 Joe Hession: they create beautiful things. So we need to give them tools to work together, and also the ability to work together, because some companies restrict people from being able to work with each other, which goes against the spirit of the whole ski industry in the first place. 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:32.000 Stuart Winchester: So if you were… So let’s think of… Let’s do a thought experiment here. So let’s take some… 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:32.000 Joe Hession: Okay. 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:53.000 Stuart Winchester: some resorts that share your operating software, right? So you have Mountain Creek, so you can do whatever you want with it, and you have big snow. I know that, for example, Greek Peak up in upstate New York uses, it’s up near Cornell, sort of central New York for folks who aren’t familiar. It would be a great feeder from Mountain Creek because it has. 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:40.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:45.000 Joe Hession: Mm-hmm. 00:31:53.000 --> 00:32:09.000 Stuart Winchester: a resort feel, and it’s a big mountain, and it has a nice hotel across the street with a water park and everything. So you have, uh, Greek Beak, and then you signed Jackson Hole, right? So would an example be that if you were a… 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:05.000 Joe Hession: Yeah. 00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:13.000 Stuart Winchester: Mountain Creek Passholder, you could somehow… 00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Mountain Creek could sign a deal with Greek Peak for shorter-term visits and Jackson Hole for longer-term. Is that the goal, and how would that be different from a pass we have now? 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:40.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, so, yeah, well, because it could be priced exactly to the price, it would make sense to the consumer. Because right now, and remember, when people buy an IndiePass or a pass like that, there’s an idea that all these resorts, like, I’m a big fan of IndiePass. 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:57.000 Joe Hession: Pareto charts, the 80/20 rule. I will guess, not knowing anything about their business, that 80% of the revenue is made up of 20% of the resorts and the visits. I will almost guarantee it because that’s how statistics works. So when you have huge numbers, it starts to cloud the efficiency of it, right? 00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:17.000 Joe Hession: So to me, I look at and say, yeah, so a program where it’s like if Mountain Creek went to Greek Peak and said, we want to have a reciprocal program where if someone uses this, it seamlessly just works at the lift. So imagine someone took their Mountain Creek pass, went and rode the lift at Greek Peak and boom, the transaction happened. The guests never even knew it happened. 00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:12.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:32.000 Joe Hession: the business relationship worked, and then we shared data to basically say, oh, this is a Mountain Creek and Greek Peak guest. Now you guys can market directly to them and hopefully get them to come for a longer stay next time. That’s where I… that’s where I would love to have it, and Greek Peak’s a great example. 00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:40.000 Joe Hession: We’re great partners with them. We love that resort. They’ve been great early adopters of SnowCloud. We’re not allowed to have a reciprocal program with them at Mountain Creek or Big. 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:58.000 Joe Hession: They’re, they’re contractly obligated not to work with anyone other than who they work with, which is, which to me is just wild. And I think most people don’t realize that that’s how it works. And, you know, the last thing we need is, is the middleman kind of inserting themselves into controlling how people operate. It’s just. 00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:10.000 Joe Hession: So… so I would love… I see a future like that. Currently, unfortunately, with a place like Repeat, we’re not allowed to work with them. We’re… we’re… and… and I mean not on Snowpass. We can’t have a reciprocal… 00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:16.000 Joe Hession: We can’t give someone a discount if they’re a Mountain Creek holder to go to Greek Peak. It’s. 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and great. 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:18.000 Joe Hession: Less rules. We need less rules. 00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:29.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, Greek Peak has worked with IndiePass since 2019. They’ve been an original partner over there. I want to get to that in a second. You know, I… 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:20.000 Joe Hession: Okay. 00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:44.000 Stuart Winchester: I don’t know if I see a post-pass world, because I like a menu, I like the big passes. However, what I think you’re describing could solve is the free visit problem. 00:34:44.000 --> 00:35:02.000 Stuart Winchester: because I know Indian Ski Cooper, for example, had a dust-up a few years ago because Ski Cooper was essentially… India accused him of essentially creating a national pass, and that was probably my fault because I wrote an article that said, hey, look at this secret national pass for 300 bucks in Colorado. Nonetheless, it’s a lot of… 00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:56.000 Joe Hession: Mm-hmm. 00:35:02.000 --> 00:35:19.000 Stuart Winchester: Free visits and you have mountains like Bogus Basin in, in Idaho that are still giving away a lot of free visits. Now, Bogus is a great business and, and it’s doing well and they have a surplus and, and they’ve evolved great in the past decade or so. Uh, but, but it seems like that could really solve that. 00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:13.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:26.000 Stuart Winchester: free visits problem, where there is some revenue sharing. Is that part of what you’re trying to solve here? 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:41.000 Joe Hession: 100%. And you see the big players do it, right? Like a big thing about us too is I’m not against anything. I think Indie is fantastic. And it’s very important to point this out. I think that is, but I also think Epic and Icon are great. 00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:35.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:42.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:57.000 Joe Hession: Like, I’ll put it this way, operating a small resort here in New Jersey, Mountain Creek, or Big Snow, there are things that Vail does so much better than us that we wish we had the resources they have. Now, with that said, we do things way better than Vail does, and they wish they had the resources. 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:14.000 Joe Hession: Or the ability to do what we can do, right? And, you know, there’s an old commercial years ago that there was, like, a big boardroom, and the boardroom, they’re like, I wonder what the little guys are doing. And then all of a sudden, it showed the people in, like, the startup, and they’re like, I wonder what the big guys are doing. So, we’re all in the same business, and we’re. 00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:06.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah. 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:32.000 Joe Hession: some of the things they’ve done to try to cure their own things. They own most of their resorts on their program, so they’re gonna do things the way that benefits them, because they own all those resorts together. And they’ve tried to solve these problems in similar ways, and I think learning from them on that stuff, same thing with Icon is doing similar stuff to that. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:35.000 Joe Hession: Um, but yeah, I think… 00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:44.000 Joe Hession: that’s exactly what we’re trying to solve. We’re trying to solve… we want resorts to have relationships that make sense to the consumer. Like, for example. 00:36:44.000 --> 00:37:00.000 Joe Hession: Who is going to go, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll focus on someone else for a minute. Who’s gonna, who’s gonna go to 40 resorts in a year on a certain pass? Nobody. Nobody. Skiers are smarter than that. No one’s doing that. What they’re doing, if you buy an Epic or Icon. 00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Right. 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:08.000 Joe Hession: in the real world, the conversation goes, um, oh, I live in New York? Great. What pass are my friends buying? 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:24.000 Joe Hession: Because where are they going to go this year? Where do we want to take our family trip? Oh, and it just happened. My wife and I, our family, we have a place in Snowmass. So every year, we have some friends who are like, I want to come out to Snowmass. Well, they buy an IconPass. Their decision is made based on, oh. 00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:11.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:18.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:43.000 Joe Hession: your condo’s available, I can go, I’m gonna lock in an Icon Pass. That’s how consumers actually work. So, to me, it’s like, I agree with you, I love the big passes, I don’t think they should go away. I think there’s a great place for India, I think there’s a great place for Icon, I think there’s a great place for Epic Pass. There might be a great place for Snowpass. 00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:59.000 Joe Hession: But I also get really excited about other options. And I feel like we’re at this disruptive time where we’re seeing the results of these passes and kind of the rubs that are rubbing people the wrong way. And I think it might be time with technology that we can kind of. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:57.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:06.000 Joe Hession: take it to the next level. Like, you know, we’re talking about the evolution of, you know, major. 00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:21.000 Joe Hession: uh, success has been done, and there’s been some learnings, right? Like… like, the pictures of the long lines and stuff, uh, that we see every holiday or powder day, like, is a result of the PASS program. It’s a result of this, it’s an output of that, and I think there’s ways we can maybe. 00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:37.000 Joe Hession: Make it better where the skier gets a better choice, a better experience, and then the resorts get to share in different ways. So really, at the end of the day, I think it’s a technology driven way to better collaborate for the betterment of the ski experience to democratize. 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:35.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:42.000 Joe Hession: It’s kind of the price and take out the middleman is really, is really my pitch. 00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:44.000 Stuart Winchester: So, Joy, I appreciate… 00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:45.000 Joe Hession: I’d like to remove myself from the equation eventually. 00:38:44.000 --> 00:39:01.000 Stuart Winchester: You know, the problem with you removing yourself from the equation, Joe, is that everyone I talk to really likes working with Snow Partners, your team. They like the train-based learning, they like your operating software. 00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:55.000 Joe Hession: Yeah. 00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:16.000 Stuart Winchester: And I appreciate that spirit of Bonhomie, and you’re right, the ski industry is small, and it was smaller than I would have imagined, and it was more welcoming than I would have imagined. I’m not sure if you read the lawsuit. 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:25.000 Stuart Winchester: The most recent one filed against Veil Altera, Boyne Powder, the National Skier Association and and RRC. And it’s built. 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:21.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:34.000 Stuart Winchester: the case for the lawsuit is built on accusations of collusion. Using a lot of. 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:33.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:50.000 Stuart Winchester: kind of fluffy evidence of people getting together at NSAA shows and basically sharing data and sharing best practices. I think all industries do this. Now, I’m going somewhere with this. 00:39:50.000 --> 00:40:07.000 Stuart Winchester: I appreciate that, and I think IndyPass, a lot of people love working with them. However, maybe a little more conflict would be good for the ski industry, because one thing I’ve seen as I’ve been reading old newspaper clippings is ski operators used to talk a lot more junk to each other, like, oh, Summit County, Colorado does. 00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:17.000 Stuart Winchester: more skier visits to the whole state of Utah. Obviously, those days are over, but there used to be a little more smack talk. So let me get into a little controversy here, and you can address this as you want. 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:13.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:17.000 Joe Hession: Yeah. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:34.000 Stuart Winchester: As you said, Indy Pass does not share. You have been willing to share and and the snow triple or snow pass shares two mountains, Bromance in Quebec and Whiteface with Mountain Collective and three. 00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, Butternut, Jiminy Peak, and Cranmore with the Icon today. You and Indy are both claiming Snow King, you’re both telling me it’s locked in, uh, and… 00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Indy’s telling me it’s only gonna be on Indy, so… there’s a little conflict for ya. Uh, how are you approaching that, and what do you think about the scenario? 00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:52.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, yeah. 00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:00.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, so we’re talking about Snow King specifically? 00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Yes, Snow King specifically. 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:10.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, so specifically Snow King, we have a signed agreement with Snow King. We’re very excited to work with Snow King. 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:08.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:23.000 Joe Hession: Uh, Snow King would love to have visits, uh, come from us, and they are on our website, and we launched with Snow King. Um, that’s where we’re at. Um, you know, as far as what’s going on with them in Indy. 00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:39.000 Joe Hession: Um, I’ll kind of let them speak to that to themselves, but from what I understand, which I’ll take some liberties and say what I think is going on, is there is a clause in an IndyPass that if someone leaves the IndyPass program. 00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:55.000 Joe Hession: They have to not work with anyone for another year. And it’s kind of buried in the fine details. So I think what happened is I think they were off that pass, planned to be off that pass, maybe wasn’t familiar with that clause, and then signed an agreement with us. 00:41:55.000 --> 00:42:10.000 Joe Hession: So for me, so the big question is, hey, so here’s the choices as we sit today. We have a signed agreement. We’ve told Snow King, if this is going to hurt you, we never want to hurt you. So we are 100% willing to do whatever that takes. 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.000 Joe Hession: to do it. 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:17.000 Joe Hession: But, you know, we’re not gonna just, like, bow down, because at the end of the day. 00:42:17.000 --> 00:42:31.000 Joe Hession: It’s also on Indy, and maybe they… maybe they signed an agreement that wasn’t… that was not the right thing to do. We have a signed agreement. They’re on our paths, right? Um, at the end of the day, there’s one person who can make a big choice here. 00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:27.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:32.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:37.000 Joe Hession: Is Indy gonna sue Snow King because of this clause in the piece? 00:42:37.000 --> 00:42:54.000 Joe Hession: I read in the Boston Globe that Eric Mogensen is going to, like, change and save skiing. Is he going to sue a small ski resort? Like, and I know that’s blunt, but I would put the ball right back in his court. I would love to, you know, if he sues Snow King. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:45.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:12.000 Joe Hession: That would be an insane thing. And I think he should go out to everyone and say, you know what, we’re not going to litigate. You know, I know he hasn’t been operating a ski resort long, and I have a ton of respect because of the fact that the fact that he’s a GM of a ski resort, the fact that he’s operating a ski resort, there’s not a single person. And I respect him. 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:27.000 Joe Hession: I really do. I really do. There’s just one piece that we don’t see eye to eye on. And it’s… he’s told me he’s the anti-collaborator, and I am the ultimate collaborator. So when you get us in the ring together, it’s one is super collaboration and one isn’t. And so to me. 00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:39.000 Joe Hession: I think, you know, the more he operates a ski resort, he’s gonna realize that litigation is one of the hardest things we have to deal with in the ski business. We have realities of things that happen at ski resorts that involve litigation. 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:49.000 Joe Hession: suing each other is just a waste of time. Like, what are we doing? Like, we should be, like, we need… we should be talking about skiing and snowboarding, and we should be thinking. 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:43.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:43:49.000 --> 00:44:09.000 Joe Hession: how many visits can Indy give Snow King? I would love for them to get a ton of visits. How many visits can Snow Pass give Snow King? Let’s get Snow King visits. Let’s give people options. And just because of, like, some, uh, you know, red tape in a contract, we’re then gonna threaten and clause, like. 00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:53.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:28.000 Joe Hession: So that’s… so here’s… so I gave you probably more than I should have, but… and I’m sure Hugh is no longer looking at me, so he… but he didn’t give me the hook, so I’m still talking, right, Hugh? We’re good? So, I’m sure… you know, but you’ll definitely… you wanted to have, you know, for this inaugural session, you wanted to have some stories. This is a story. 00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:39.000 Joe Hession: The story is, the reality is, the truth is, that they were under contract, Indy, from what I understand, which they’ve told me, they wrote they are no longer to work, they gave them the right. 00:44:39.000 --> 00:44:53.000 Joe Hession: I’m out. This is the time you’re supposed to be out. They were unaware of this one clause, which we were also unaware of. We signed, we moved forward, we announced. After announcement, it was, no, you can’t do that. So, really, right now, I think Snow King would gladly take visits from both. 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:54.000 Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:56.000 Joe Hession: We would gladly take visits from both. 00:44:56.000 --> 00:45:02.000 Joe Hession: Ball’s in Mogensen’s court, we’ll see what he does. I guess the best way to approach this is publicly. So, here. 00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:00.000 Stuart Winchester: And he… 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:16.000 Stuart Winchester: I agree, and Eric is scheduled to be on this podcast on Thursday, so he will have his chance to respond. And you know what, Joe, you’re welcome back anytime to respond. But before you go out the door, I do want… I did promise to keep these short, and I know for you and I. 00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:07.000 Joe Hession: Perfect! 00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:12.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:16.000 Joe Hession: Yep. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:31.000 Stuart Winchester: Both, that’s a challenge. I do want to call out some of these awesome new triple play partners, uh, Jiminy Peak and Cramore, especially. I have a ton of respect for the Fairbanks and, and, uh, what, and what they do. Uh, Bromont is, is an excellent. 00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:28.000 Joe Hession: Yeah. 00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:51.000 Stuart Winchester: edition, and Hallamont. Actually, Hallamont is on Snow Pass as well, which is a terrific skier. I never realized until I went there this year. It’s just because it’s private on the weekends and in public during the week. What do you have to do to convince some of these folks, especially Jiminy Cranmore Bromont, to jump over to Snow Pass? Do you think there’s a path there? 00:45:52.000 --> 00:46:10.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, you know, I do. I think it’s kind of proving it out over time, but also making, you know, going back to what I said earlier, maybe the right product for them is a relationship with different resorts, right? Maybe it’s a whole new version of what happens, but I think we’re very lucky to have them on the program. 00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:25.000 Joe Hession: Both operators are fantastic. Brian and Tyler Fairbank, we go back really far. Like, they were early adopters of us with snow operating and train-based learning. Brian Fairbank, if people don’t know, is one of the godfathers of snowmaking in the industry. 00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:16.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:40.000 Joe Hession: He’s still at it. He’s in his 80s. He’s out there making snow. I mean, he’s an absolute legend. So anytime we get to work with him and his resort partners, we’re really happy. Tyler, we’ve obviously known for well over a decade and a half as well. 00:46:40.000 --> 00:47:00.000 Joe Hession: great resorts, we’ve loved visiting them, and I think they’re great operators, so I think people are going to love discovering them. And that’s, you know, one thing I’ll give a lot of credit to Indy for, which has opened our eyes, is the fact that there’s so many passes on the program, there’s the fact that there’s all these different options. People learn new places they’ve never learned before, right? And I think Epic and I kind of have done the same. 00:46:54.000 --> 00:46:55.000 Stuart Winchester: Mmhm. 00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:15.000 Joe Hession: You know, I never thought of going to Crested Butte, but because it’s on the Epic Pass, I’m going to go to Crested Butte, or I never thought of going to this resort, but because of it. And I think that’s been a huge success. And it’s great to hear you say, like, Hollymont, like, oh, I didn’t know that much about the. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:05.000 Stuart Winchester: Yep. 00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:29.000 Joe Hession: I think that’s the spirit. The spirit is, how do you take skiers from different regions and inspire them to want to go to somewhere else and make that transaction seamless and easy for the operators to navigate, is really our goal. 00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:49.000 Stuart Winchester: It’s such a rich world, and I love how you’re helping folks explore it. Leave us with this, Joe. Where can we buy Snowpass? And I believe you said you’re selling a limited number. You probably won’t tell me that number, but how soon should folks go to where you’re going to tell us to go before they’re going to lose this special price of, I believe, 340 for Snowpass and 179? 00:47:49.000 --> 00:47:52.000 Stuart Winchester: For the triple play. 00:47:52.000 --> 00:48:05.000 Joe Hession: Correct. So, so 4pm today, mysnowpass.com, uh, it’s gonna be a limited release. Uh, if you know the Mound Creek world, and you know how we do it, it’s actually Mound Creek’s on the clock right now. 00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:22.000 Joe Hession: Um, we’ve been selling for 31 minutes, so I’m gonna get an update when we get off the call here, but at 4 o’clock, we will have our watch party with our group in the kind of war room. We’re watching the transactions live. We have a number that we have promised ourselves we will not exceed, and it’ll shut itself down at that number. 00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:09.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:40.000 Joe Hession: Um, so 4PM today will be, uh… will be the birth of a new product in the industry, which hopefully will inspire other new products down the road, and… and hopefully start to change the relationship between resorts and… and the skiers, because that’s what it’s about. It’s about getting skiers the best price for the best mountains, new… doing new things, and working together. 00:48:40.000 --> 00:49:00.000 Joe Hession: And we have a beautiful industry of resorts, but we have great customers. People who are skiers and snowboarders are so passionate. Like, I read everything they post on your stuff. You know, the comments have been just amazing. And, you know, we’re looking forward to, over time, I want to make that person in Colorado that keeps saying, this pass stinks, has nothing to do for me. 00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you. 00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:09.000 Joe Hession: I want to eventually win them over by giving them a product that does make sense for them or allowing resorts there to find a product that works for them. So it’s really exciting day. 00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:17.000 Stuart Winchester: Colorado bro is very proud of Colorado. Uh, last year, Joe, you sold Snow Triple Play, I believe, until Christmas Eve. You have a similar schedule in mind for these two passes this year? 00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:11.000 Joe Hession: Yes. 00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:32.000 Joe Hession: Yeah, exactly the same schedule. So they’ll be… the best price will be the launches. So today will be the lowest possible price, it’ll scale up in another drop, and then it’ll be on sale for a little bit at its full retail price, and then it’ll turn off at that time. Exactly. 00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay. 00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:51.000 Stuart Winchester: Joe, so good to run you down. Good luck with the launch. I can’t wait to see how it goes, and how this thing grows, and frankly, how this little controversy between Snowpass and Indypass resolves itself, because I’m sure that you will find a way through it. So, thank you so much for being my first guest on the new platform. I really appreciate it. 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:35.000 Joe Hession: Yes. 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:51.000 Joe Hession: Okay. 00:49:51.000 --> 00:49:54.000 Stuart Winchester: You’re welcome on anytime. We’ll talk to you really soon. 00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:56.000 Joe Hession: Great. Thanks for having me. 00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:57.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, take care, Joe. Bye now. 00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:00.000 Stuart Winchester: Alright, so… 00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:03.000 Stuart Winchester: Uh, what do you… 00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:23.000 Stuart Winchester: Okay, so that was Joe Heschen, the CEO of Snow Partners and the founder. Quick update from another partner before I wrap up the show today. If you run a ski area or outdoor brand, I want to tell you about my friends at Bonfire Collective. 00:50:23.000 --> 00:50:35.000 Stuart Winchester: They are a fractional marketing team that collaborates with ski areas and outdoor brands, and they will give your marketing a fresh perspective and better storytelling to supercharge your rebranding or advertising. 00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:41.000 Stuart Winchester: Bonfire can help you rethink your approach in ways that can turbocharge your business. 00:50:41.000 --> 00:50:49.000 Stuart Winchester: For example, Bonfire took on the marketing at one New Hampshire ski area and doubled revenue in just three years. 00:50:49.000 --> 00:51:04.000 Stuart Winchester: When the storm was ready to invest in its first ever digital marketing campaign last year, I worked with Bonfire to make it happen. I could not be happier with the results, and I think you will love working with them as well. To get started, you’ll want to talk to Eric. 00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:21.000 Stuart Winchester: over at Bonfire Collective. He was a co-founder of Bluebird Backcountry Colorado, the first human-powered ski area, so he knows the ski business. You can actually listen to his podcast episode on the Storm Skiing Podcast, long form. Visit bonfirecollective.com. 00:51:21.000 --> 00:51:25.000 Stuart Winchester: Or I will be happy to make that connection for you. 00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:28.000 Stuart Winchester: All right, how great was Joe? 00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:45.000 Stuart Winchester: This is why I love the new pod, because I can have guys like that on all the time. I have dozens of relationships like that throughout the ski industry. Anytime you’ve listened to a podcast and you’ve heard someone on there and you enjoyed the conversation. 00:51:45.000 --> 00:52:01.000 Stuart Winchester: Whether it was Carl Kapczynski, who runs California Mountain Resorts, or… and owns Mountain High, and Bear Valley, and China Peak, and Dodge Ridge out in California. Or if it was… 00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:15.000 Stuart Winchester: Dustin, who… the president at Copper Mountain, uh, or it was Rob Katz, you know, the Vale CEO. I’m interacting with these people, or… or the folks who represent them, all the time. 00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:31.000 Stuart Winchester: I talk to Carl Kabasinski all the time, but I haven’t had him on the podcast in four years. He’s already agreed to come on the new shorter form to talk about all the things going on in his mountains. And that’s what’s great about it. And, you know, one of the concerns that I heard from people when I announced a shorter form pod was. 00:52:31.000 --> 00:52:47.000 Stuart Winchester: Oh, well, I really like when you covered small mountains. Well, this will allow me to do that much more, because I don’t have to commit an entire hour and a half long episode to it, and it doesn’t have to be the whole history of the area. I can just, for example, ask. 00:52:47.000 --> 00:53:02.000 Stuart Winchester: Rick Schmitz from Little Switzerland in Wisconsin to come onto the show and talk about the new quad chairlift that he’s putting up or two new quads putting up in a little Switzerland this summer for winter 2026 to 27. 00:53:02.000 --> 00:53:07.000 Stuart Winchester: So, I want to know what you think. What do you think of the new pod? 00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:14.000 Stuart Winchester: In order to let me know what you think, you leave… go to stormskating.com. 00:53:14.000 --> 00:53:26.000 Stuart Winchester: find the article, it’ll be right there on the front page, that this podcast is hosted on, and you leave a comment. You can only do that if you’re a paid subscriber. Uh… 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:29.000 Stuart Winchester: I stopped reading social media. 00:53:29.000 --> 00:53:38.000 Stuart Winchester: comments a long time ago, because what I realized, and I liked social media for a while, and I built up a pretty big Twitter following. 00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:42.000 Stuart Winchester: But what I realized is that when anyone in the world. 00:53:42.000 --> 00:53:45.000 Stuart Winchester: can say whatever they want. 00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:52.000 Stuart Winchester: Whenever they want, whatever they want, whenever they want, anonymously, they will. 00:53:52.000 --> 00:54:04.000 Stuart Winchester: And it’s a big energy suck. It’s a big mental energy suck, and it brings me down, and it distracts me from my work, and it’s not a good place to put my energy. 00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:13.000 Stuart Winchester: But if you are a paid subscriber and you have some skin in this game and you have contributed and you’re supporting the storm. 00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:29.000 Stuart Winchester: You have a right to be heard. You make those comments. I will read them. Some of them I will read on this podcast in this final segment. That’s generally what this will be devoted to, and I’ll react to them. And so you can be part of the show as well. 00:54:29.000 --> 00:54:48.000 Stuart Winchester: If you are a paid subscriber. If not, that’s fine. Sit back, enjoy the show. I know that we all have subscription fatigue, and not all of us can afford everything. So, I appreciate everyone who’s listening. I really, really want to know what you hear about the new format pod. I’m going to be back tomorrow. 00:54:48.000 --> 00:55:05.000 Stuart Winchester: With the president and general manager of Loon Mountain, which last week announced a huge expansion, all Glades that will make Loon the largest ski area in New Hampshire. Sorry, Bretton Woods, but this is what the podcast is for. I’m going to be able to get right to the news. 00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:20.000 Stuart Winchester: Talk to the guy who’s making it happen or at least leading the team that’s making it happen about it in real time as much as possible. So again, if you want to support the storm, a few ways you can do it. The best way, subscribe. 00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:35.000 Stuart Winchester: subscription business. What you will get with that is not only the ability to participate in the podcast, but everything below the paywall that I write. And there’s still going to be a lot of writing, mostly analysis now. We’re going to do news mostly on the podcast. 00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:49.000 Stuart Winchester: You can also… see this rad shirt I’m wearing? If you’re… if you’re watching on YouTube or Substack or something else I don’t know about where you can watch it, you can get this yourself. You can order it at the Storm store, uh, at… 00:55:49.000 --> 00:56:07.000 Stuart Winchester: stormskiing.myshopify.com. We have all kinds of stuff there. Hats, hoodies, uh, swag. My wife designed it all. She’s also the editor of the podcast. She’s the best. She’s the voice that you hear at the end. So, uh, you can support the storm in those ways. You can also just follow the storm. 00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:19.000 Stuart Winchester: on YouTube or Instagram, at Storm Ski Journal. Until next time, which will be tomorrow, stay well, stay safe. I’m Stuart Winchester, and I’ll talk to you again very soon. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

   September 08, 2026·54min
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4. 4
   Number 4: Podcast #227: Taos Ski Valley CEO John Kelly

   The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast still has a podcast. Get new episodes the moment they’re live by subscribing to the email newsletter: Who John Kelly, CEO of Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico Recorded on November 13, 2025 About Taos Ski Valley Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Louis Bacon (since December 2013) Located in: Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico Year founded: 1955 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass – 7 days, no blackouts * Ikon Base Pass – 5 days, holiday blackouts * Ikon Session Pass – 1-4 days, holiday blackouts * Mountain Collective – 2 days, no blackouts * Ski New Mexico True Pass – 2 days, holiday blackouts Base elevation: 9,350 feet Summit elevation: 12,450 feet lift-served, 12,481 hike-to Vertical drop: 3,100 feet lift-served, 3,131 hike-to. Skiable acres: 1,294 (some hike-to) Average annual snowfall: 300 inches claimed on website; calculated 36-year average using data sourced from Taos’ 2010 master development plan, Ski New Mexico tallies, and media reports is 233 inches. The 10-year average falls to 166 inches. Here’s the year-by-year breakdown: Trail count: 110 (24% beginner, 25% intermediate, 51% expert) Lift count: 13 (1 pulse gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 4 triples, 1 double, 3 carpets) Why I interviewed him Let’s start with a superficially troubling number: Taos’ long, steady decline in average annual skier visits: That doesn’t look so good, especially when laid alongside the long-term increase in national skier visits: Taos not only declined in the context of national skier visits, but also among its peers. In winter 1983-84, Taos drew more skiers (241,000) than Telluride (132,460), Big Sky (136,000), Jackson Hole (177,000), Whitefish (I’m lacking an estimate for that winter, but the ski area then known as “Big Mountain” logged 209,000 skiers in 1980-81 and 170,581 in 1985-86). Taos (dark blue line below), continued to out-duel this group through about the mid-90s before falling off a cliff: So what happened? 1995 Taos, a freeride mecca before freeride was cool, should have been perfectly suited to flourish in a cultural moment when skiers began demanding more interesting terrain than the groomed superhighways that had become the industry’s default setting. Sure, Taos was remote and a bit harder to access than, say, Keystone or Park City, but so were Jackson and Whitefish and Big Sky and Telluride. A partial explanation: Taos stopped modernizing. After replacing the Lift 2 double with a fixed-grip quad in 1994, Taos didn’t install another new chairlift for 19 years. The first detachable didn’t arrive until 2018. The resort banned snowboards until 2008. Meanwhile, Big Sky laced a tram to the summit of Lone Peak in 1995 and started pushing detachable quads up the mountain; the first high-speed quads arrived at Telluride in 1986 and Whitefish in 1989. It’s not a perfect narrative – while Jackson Hole rolled out its short Sublette detach in the mid-90s, the mountain didn’t install an upper-mountain high-speed chairlift until Casper in 2012. Skier visits went up and up and up all that time, probably due in large part to aggressive improvements at the Jackson Hole airport. Maybe, though, it’s as simple as this: banger snow years descended upon Taos – and New Mexico in general – from the late ‘80s through mid-‘90s. It’s little surprise that attendance ups-and-downs largely mirror snowfall patterns: But, as the corresponding trendlines show, Taos’ skier visits have not declined at the same rate as the mountain’s average annual snowfall. And while Jackson’s long-term average snowfall has remained relatively constant, attendance has crept steadily upward. Attendance spiked at both mountains when the 2018-19 season brought both plentiful snow and the introduction of the Ikon Pass: Unfortunately, Taos stopped reporting skier visits after the Covid-shortened 2019-20 season, so we have less concrete insight into whether the mountain’s recent investments in a reconfigured beginner area and a second detachable on the backside have insulated it from two historically poor snow years. This is why it’s nice to have basic visitation data, and why I’m pushing the ski industry to again publicize annual attendance for ski areas occupying public lands (since going live with a chart of 2,406 years of skier visit data for 97 ski areas with 10 or more years of attendance available, I’m up to 2,822 years across 108 ski areas, and I have a total of 3,802 years of data across 184 active U.S. ski areas for which I could find at least one year of attendance). We do know this: Taos doesn’t want to return to the world of 300,000-plus skier visits. Somewhere between 250,000 and 275,000 is the “right number for the experience we want Taos to have,” Kelly tells us on the pod. Meaning: fewer skiers spread via a modern lift network is a better business than 364,000 skiers funneling onto double chairs. This flips the busiest-equals-best narrative that made skier-visit counts a 20th-century bragging point. I’ve heard the same logic articulated by the leaders of Killington, Waterville Valley, and other ski areas that have created a better business even with fewer skiers on their mountains. Jackson Hole, too, halted its relentless upward surge – that 2020-21 dip was deliberate, as the mountain exited Ikon Base and implemented a reservation system. This approach makes sense to me. With U.S. skier visits surging (until this year) and an Ikon or Epic pass in every pocket, no one wants to brag about being busy anymore. Space is the new volume. Social media can still transform one bad liftline into an eternal meme, but at least most skiers on the ground will have a better day most of the time than they probably would have 30 years ago. What doesn’t make sense to me is why, in a less-is-more era, ski area operators have suddenly decided that skier visits should be guarded like Fort Knox. If fewer skiers is a good thing and a stated goal, why hide the numbers? The resorts ought to just say “Hey we’ve deliberately reduced our annual skier count from 300,000 to 250,000 [or whatever] to create a better mountain for you.” Instead, this secrecy around volume just looks cagey - if national skier visit numbers are up, then why should skiers just believe ski areas when they say “trust us, it’s better now,” and offer no data to support it? Perception is reality, and today’s skiing zeitgeist, as channeled by social media, tells us that American skiers perceive busier mountains today than they did a decade ago. But I’m getting off track. Since Louis Bacon bought Taos in 2013, he’s funded an almost-complete renovation of what had become America’s most decrepit destination ski resort. I don’t think any mountain operating on U.S. Forest Service lands has more completely remade itself in the past decade (rapidly changing Big Sky, Deer Valley, and Powder Mountain operate on private property). Glimmering new but reset to 1970s volume, Taos is beautifully positioned to tap a skiing public that’s burned-out on Colorado and Utah crowds but accustomed to modern lifts and snowmaking. What we talked about Taos as a family ski mountain; last winter’s Chair 7 upgrade and custom terminals; owner Louis Bacon’s mission to “improve everything without changing a thing”; why Taos changed from Skytrac to parent company Leitner-Poma for its newer lifts; Taos’ great base-area reorganization; the story behind the Free Tacos run; a green run from the top of every lift other than the fierce Kachina triple; Taos’ massive evolution since 2015; whether the mountain is committed to long-term independence; the founding Blake family’s legacy and presence at Taos today; executing rapid development on Forest Service land; [VIDEO BONUS: Cat photobombing]; running Taos with the context of having worked at also-independent Telluride; becoming a skier growing up in Nashville, Tennessee; Telluride’s evolution from semi-affordable to gigantic housing puzzle; employee housing at Taos; the logic behind the proposed base-to-base gondola and navigating local opposition; thoughts on the evolution of lifts 2 and 8; preserving parts of the hike-to ski experience; Taos’ evolution after the Kachina Peak lift; lift 7A; the Minnesotas glades from the masterplan; avalanche mitigation; old-school boot-packing; parking lot evolutions; an ideal annual skier visit number and why that number is below historic highs; and getting to Taos. What I got wrong * When we discuss the wood-paneled terminals on Taos’ new Lift 7, I ask if they’re thematically related to the “wood RFID gates.” This is a reference to an earlier conversation that I cut, about Taos finally installing RFID for the 2025-26 ski season (the gates carry a wood theme). * I said that the trees skier’s left of the Pioneer chair were not a named run, but they in fact are, and “Free Tacos” has a pretty awesome story behind it. * I accidentally asked Kelly to, “lay out the housing landscape for Telluride” but meant to say “Taos.” I didn’t catch this in real time, but Kelly – who spent several years at Telluride before moving to Taos in 2015 – caught it and course-corrected. Questions I wished I’d asked Taos’ 2010 USFS masterplan proposed a 7,045-foot-long, 2,363-vertical-foot detach quad that would have run parallel to Lift 1 to the top of Lift 2: We did, however, discuss the proposed 545-vertical-foot, 991-foot-long Ridge Lift off of Lift 8, and why Taos nixed that machine from its latest MDP: Why you should (or shouldn’t) ski Taos Taos, like Jackson Hole or Snowbird or Palisades Tahoe, has a toughguy reputation. The place ripples with hike-to chutes and glades. To calm visitors shocked by the vertical bump run rocketing skyward beneath Chair 1, Taos to erected this base-area sign decades ago: The sign refers to the infamous Al’s Run, which typically ripples with moguls, but was closed on my last visit, in March 2025 (Lift 1 was open): Taos certainly has plenty of nasty. The terrain ripping off the Kachina Peak triple is among the steepest inbounds terrain I’m aware of in America. But what shocked me about the place was how approachable it was for my then-8-year-old son, a solid but very intermediate skier. Every chair other than Kachina offers a top-to-bottom green – and some mostly mellow blues – making Taos one of the better family mountains in America. A lot of the solid-black terrain sits above the lifts, and requires a short, easy hike. If you’ve ever humped up Catherine’s at Alta or Spanky’s Ladder on Blackcomb, the ascent off of Lift 2 over to Highline Ridge or West Basin Ridge isn’t much longer, and it flattens out considerably after the short incline. Unlike East Wall at A-Basin or Highlands Bowl at Aspen Highlands, this is hike-up terrain that’s approachable for people who (like me), live at sea level and only like going up the mountain on machines. The runs are steep, and solo missions are discouraged, but the easy-in and proximity to lifts means a strong skier could reasonably expect to tuck a half-dozen hike-up laps into an afternoon. Here I am huffing and puffing right off Chair 2: Dang those trees are steep even right off the jump. Crunch crunch crunch: Go up a bit higher, and things get Lord of The Rings pretty fast: Taos’ only real buyer-beware statistic is its insane base elevation of 9,350 feet, which makes everything, especially sleep, a bit more challenging. That altitude is actually a bit lower than the bases at Copper (9,712) or Breck (9,600). I start to have trouble functioning around 8,000 feet, which is the Vail (8,120), Snowmass (8,110), Snowbird (7,760), and Mammoth (7,953) range. So maybe see how you do at one of those burners before leveling up above 9,000 feet. Or at least arrive knowing that Taos will try punching you in the face. Hydrate and lay off the beer bongs for a day or two. You’ll be fine. Podcast Notes On Stadeli lifts We’ve got 16 of these guys left across 10 U.S. ski areas, including Lift 7A at Taos: On the character of old chairlifts I wrote last year that U.S. ski lifts’ overall design aesthetic has deteriorated with the decline in number of manufacturers and a tacit emphasis on technology over beauty. And I love old Riblets and Halls and Yans, but sentimentalism that locks skiing in a time capsule ultimately stalls long-term growth and invites disaster-by-disintegration. Rather than fight to live in a museum, I’ve adopted a quest mentality to ride as many of these dinosaurs as I can before they go extinct: On Taos’ base-area fliparound On Taos’ current masterplan Here’s the conceptual overview of Taos’ 2021 U.S. Forest Service master development plan: The major unrealized part of this is the base-to-base gondola - here’s the most recent plan for that lift: On “class A avalanche mountains” with more than 200 slidepaths Kelly mentioned that Taos’ more than 200 slidepaths earn it the designation of a Class A avalanche mountain. I of course went looking for a list of U.S. ski areas so classified, and of course did not find one. In a rare exercise in self-restraint, however, I also did not create one. A quick Google search suggests that that such a list would include Alta, Kirkwood, and Stevens Pass alongside Taos. I would also assume that Alpine Meadows, Palisades, Mammoth, Snowbird, Big Sky, Silverton, and Crested Butte are among the most avy prone. That is not a complete list or an attempt at one so please don’t write that I “forgot about” some particularly avalanche-prone mountain that I’m not trying very hard to remember. On The Storm’s first Taos podcast The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

   June 04, 2026·1h 9min
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5. 5
   Number 5: Podcast #210: Mt. Hood Meadows President and General Manager Greg Pack

   The Storm does not cover athletes or gear or hot tubs or whisky bars or helicopters or bros jumping off things. I’m focused on the lift-served skiing world that 99 percent of skiers actually inhabit, and I’m covering it year-round. To support this mission of independent ski journalism, please subscribe to the free or paid versions of the email newsletter. Who Greg Pack, President and General Manager of Mt. Hood Meadows, Oregon Recorded on April 28, 2025 About Mt. Hood Meadows Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Drake Family (and other minority shareholders) Located in: Mt. Hood, Oregon Year founded: 1968 Pass affiliations: * Indy Pass – 2 days, select blackouts * Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts Closest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Summit (:17), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:19), Cooper Spur (:23), Timberline (:26) Base elevation: 4,528 feet Summit elevation: 7,305 feet at top of Cascade Express; 9,000 feet at top of hike-to permit area; 11,249 feet at summit of Mount Hood Vertical drop: 2,777 feet lift-served; 4,472 hike-to inbounds; 6,721 feet from Mount Hood summit Skiable acres: 2,150 Average annual snowfall: 430 inches Trail count: 87 (15% beginner, 40% intermediate, 15% advanced, 30% expert) Lift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 5 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mount Hood Meadows’ lift fleet) About Cooper Spur Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Drake Family Located in: Mt. Hood, Oregon Year founded: 1927 Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts Closest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Mt. Hood Meadows (:22), Summit (:29), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:30), Timberline (:37) Base elevation: 3,969 feet Summit elevation: 4,400 feet Vertical drop: 431 feet Skiable acres: 50 Average annual snowfall: 250 inches Trail count: 9 (1 most difficult, 7 more difficult, 1 easier) Lift count: 2 (1 double, 1 ropetow – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Cooper Spur’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him Volcanoes are weird. Oh look, an exploding mountain. Because that seems reasonable. Volcanoes sound like something imagined, like dragons or teleportation or dinosaurs*. “So let me get this straight,” I imagine some puzzled Appalachian miner, circa 1852, responding to the fellow across the fire as he tells of his adventures in the Oregon Territory, “you expect me to believe that out thataways they got themselves mountains that just blow their roofs off whenever they feel like it, and shoot off fire and rocks and gas for 50 mile or more, and no one never knows when it’s a’comin’? You must think I’m dumber’n that there tree stump.” Turns out volcanoes are real. How humanity survived past day one I have no idea. But here we are, skiing on volcanoes instead of tossing our virgins from the rim as a way of asking the nice mountain to please not explode (seriously how did anyone make it out of the past alive?). And one of the volcanoes we can ski on is Mount Hood. This actually seems more unbelievable to me than the concept of a vengeful nuclear mountain. PNW Nature Bros shield every blade of grass like they’re guarding Fort Knox. When, in 2014, federal scientists proposed installing four monitoring stations on Hood, which the U.S. Geological Survey ranks as the sixth-highest threat to erupt out of America’s 161 active volcanoes, these morons stalled the process for six years. “I think it is so important to have places like that where we can just step back, out of respect and humility, and appreciate nature for what it is,” a Wilderness Watch official told The New York Times. Personally I think it’s so important to install basic monitoring infrastructure so that thousands of people are not incinerated in a predictable volcanic eruption. While “Japan, Iceland and Chile smother their high-threat volcanoes in scientific instruments,” The Times wrote, American Granola Bros say things like, “This is more proof that the Forest Service has abandoned any pretense of administering wilderness as per the letter or spirit of the Wilderness Act.” And Hood and the nation’s other volcanoes cackle madly. “These idiots are dumber than the human-sacrifice people,” they say just before belching up an ash cloud that could take down a 747. When officials finally installed these instrument clusters on Hood in 2020, they occupied three boxes that look to be approximately the size of a convenience-store ice freezer, which feels like an acceptable trade-off to mass death and airplanes falling out of the sky. I know that as an outdoor writer I’m supposed to be all pissed off if anyone anywhere suggests any use of even a centimeter of undeveloped land other than giving it back to the deer in a treaty printed on recycled Styrofoam and signed with human blood to symbolize the life we’ve looted from nature by commandeering 108 square feet to potentially protect millions of lives from volcanic eruption, but this sort of trivial protectionism and willful denial that humans ought to have rights too is the kind of brainless uncompromising overreach that I fear will one day lead to a massive over-correction at the other extreme, in which a federal government exhausted with never being able to do anything strips away or massively dilutes land protections that allow anyone to do anything they can afford. And that’s when we get Monster Pete’s Arctic Dune Buggies setting up a casino/coal mine/rhinoceros-hunting ranch on the Eliot Glacier and it’s like thanks Bros I hope that was worth it to stall the placement of gardenshed-sized public safety infrastructure for six years. Anyway, given the trouble U.S. officials have with installing necessary things on Mount Hood, it’s incredible how many unnecessary ones our ancestors were able to build. But in 1927 the good old boys hacked their way into the wilderness and said, “by gum what a spot for snoskiing” and built a bunch of ski areas. And today 31 lifts serve four Mt. Hood ski areas covering a combined 4,845 acres: Which I’m just like, do these Wilderness Watch people not know about this? Perhaps if this and similar groups truly cared about the environmental integrity of Mount Hood they would invest their time, energy, and attention into a long-term regional infrastructure plan that identified parcels for concentrated mixed-use development and non-personal-car-based transit options to mitigate the impact of thousands of skiers traveling up the mountain daily from Portland, rather than in delaying the installation of basic monitoring equipment that notifies humanity of a civilization-shattering volcanic eruption before it happens. But then again I am probably not considering how this would impact the integrity of squirrel poop decomposition below 6,000 feet and the concomitant impacts on pinestand soil erosion which of course would basically end life as we know it on planet Earth. OK this went sideways let me try to salvage it. *Whoops I know dinosaurs were real; I meant to write “the moon landing.” How embarrassing. What we talked about A strong 2024-25; recruiting employees in mountains with little nearby housing; why Meadows doesn’t compete with Timberline for summer skiing; bye-bye Blue double, Meadows’ last standing opening-year chairlift; what it takes to keep an old Riblet operating; the reliability of old versus new chairlifts; Blue’s slow-motion demolition and which relics might remain long term; the logic of getting a free anytime buddy lift ticket with your season pass; thoughts on ski area software providers that take a percentage of all sales; why Meadows and Cooper Spur have no pass reciprocity; the ongoing Cooper Spur land exchange; the value of Cooper Spur and Summit on a volcano with three large ski areas; why Meadows hasn’t backed away from reciprocal agreements; why Meadows chose Indy over Epic, Ikon, or Mountain Collective; becoming a ski kid when you’re not from a ski family; landing at Mountain Creek, New Jersey after a Colorado ski career; how Moonlight Basin started as an independent ski area and eventually became part of Big Sky; the tension underlying Telluride; how the Drake Family, who has managed the ski area since inception, makes decisions; a board that reinvests 100 percent of earnings back into the mountain; why we need large independents in a consolidating world; being independent is “our badge of honor”; whether ownership wants to remain independent long term; potential next lift upgrades; a potential all-new lift line and small expansion; thoughts on a better Heather lift; wild Hood weather and the upper limits of lift service; considering surface lifts on the upper mountain; the challenges of running Cascade Express; the future of the Daisy and Easy Rider doubles; more potential future expansion; and whether we could ever see a ski connection with Timberline Lodge. Why now was a good time for this interview It’s kind of dumb that 210 episodes into this podcast I’ve only recorded one Oregon ep: Timberline Lodge President Jeff Kohnstamm, more than three years ago. While Oregon only has 11 active ski areas, and the state ranks 11th-ish in skier visits, it’s an important ski state. PNW skiers treat skiing like the Northeast treats baseball or the Midwest treats football or D.C. treats politics: rabid beyond reason. That explains the eight Idaho pods and half dozen each in Washington and B.C. These episodes hit like a hash stand at a Dead show. So why so few Oregon eps? Eh, no reason in particular. There isn’t a ski area in North America that I don’t want to feature on the podcast, but I can’t just order them online like a pizza. Relationships, more than anything, drive the podcast, and The Storm’s schedule is primarily opportunity driven. I invite folks on as I meet them or when they do something cool. And sometimes we can connect right away and sometimes it takes months or even years, even if they want to do it. Sometimes we’re waiting on contracts or approvals so we can discuss some big project in depth. It can take time to build trust, or to convince a non-podcast person that they have a great story to tell. So we finally get to Meadows. Not to be It-Must-Be-Nice Bro about benefits that arise from clear deliberate life choices, but It must be nice to live in the PNW, where every city sits within 90 minutes of a ripping, open-until-Memorial-Day skyscraper that gets carpet bombed with 400 annual inches but receives between one and four out-of-state visitors per winter. Yeah the ski areas are busy anyway because they don’t have enough of them, but busy with Subaru-driving Granola Bros is different than busy with Subaru-driving Granola Bros + Texas Bro whose cowboy boots aren’t clicking in right + Florida Bro who bought a Trans Am for his boa constrictor + Midwest Bro rocking Olin 210s he found in Gramp’s garage + Hella Rad Cali Bro + New Yorker Bro asking what time they groom Corbet’s + Aussie Bro touring the Rockies on a seven-week long weekend + Euro Bro rocking 65 cm underfoot on a two-foot powder day. I have no issue with tourists mind you because I am one but there is something amazing about a ski area that is gigantic and snowy and covered in modern infrastructure while simultaneously being unknown outside of its area code. Yes this is hyperbole. But while everyone in Portland knows that Meadows has the best parking lot views in America and a statistical profile that matches up with Beaver Creek and as many detachable chairlifts as Snowbasin or Snowbird and more snow than Steamboat or Jackson or Palisades or Pow Mow, most of the rest of the world doesn’t, and I think they should. Why you should ski Mt. Hood Meadows and Cooper Spur It’s interesting that the 4,845 combined skiable acres of Hood’s four ski areas are just a touch larger than the 4,323 acres at Mt. Bachelor, which as far as I know has operated as a single interconnected facility since its 1958 founding. Both are volcanoes whose ski areas operate on U.S. Forest Service land a commutable distance from demographically similar markets, providing a case study in distributed versus centralized management. Bachelor in many ways delivers a better experience. Bachelor’s snow is almost always drier and better, an outlier in the kingdom of Cascade Concrete. Skiers can move contiguously across its full acreage, an impossible mission on Balkanized Hood. The mountain runs an efficient, mostly modern 15 lifts to Hood’s wild 31, which includes a dozen detachables but also a half dozen vintage Riblet doubles with no safety bars. Bachelor’s lifts scale the summit, rather than stopping thousands of feet short as they do on Hood. While neither are Colorado-grade destination ski areas, metro Portland is stuffed with 25 times more people than Bend, and Hood ski areas have an everbusy feel that skiers can often outrun at Bachelor. Bachelor is closer to its mothership – just 26 minutes from Bend to Portland’s hour-to-two-hour commutes up to the ski areas. And Bachelor, accessible on all versions of the Ikon Pass and not hamstrung by the confusing counter-branding of multiple ski areas with similar names occupying the same mountain, presents a more clearcut target for the mainstream skier. But Mount Hood’s quirky scatterplot ski centers reward skiers in other ways. Four distinct ski areas means four distinct ski cultures, each with its own pace, purpose, customs, traditions, and orientation to the outside world. Timberline Lodge is a funky mix of summertime Bro parks, Government Camp greens, St. Bernards, and its upscale landmark namesake hotel. Cooper Spur is tucked-away, low-key, low-vert family resort skiing. Meadows sprawls, big and steep, with Hood’s most interesting terrain. And low-altitude, closest-to-the-city Skibowl is night-lit slowpoke with a vintage all-Riblet lift fleet. Your Epic and Ikon passes are no good here, though Indy gets you Meadows and Cooper Spur. Walk-up lift tickets (still the only way to buy them at Skibowl), are more tier-varied and affordable than those at Bachelor, which can exceed $200 on peak days (though Bachelor heavily discounts access to its beginner lifts, with free access to select novice areas). Bachelor’s $1,299 season pass is 30 percent more expensive than Meadows’. This dynamic, of course, showcases single-entity efficiency and market capture versus the messy choice of competition. Yes Free Market Bro you are right sometimes. Hood’s ski areas have more inherent motivators to fight on price, forge allegiances like the Timberline-Skibowl joint season pass, invest in risks like night and summer skiing, and run wonky low-tide lift ticket deals. Empowering this flexibility: all four Hood ski areas remain locally owned – Meadows and T-Line by their founding families. Bachelor, of course, is a fiefdom of Park City, Utah-based Powdr, which owns a half-dozen other ski areas across the West. I don’t think that Hood is better than Bachelor or that Bachelor is better than Hood. They’re different, and you should ski both. But however you dissect the niceties of these not-really-competing-but-close-enough-that-a-comarison-makes-sense ski centers, the on-the-ground reality adds up to this: Hood locals, in general, are a far more contented gang than Bachelor Bros. I don’t have any way to quantify this, and Bachelor has its partisans. But I talk to skiers all over the country, all the time. Skiers will complain about anything, and online guttings of even the most beloved mountains exist. But talk to enough people and strong enough patterns emerge to understand that, in general, locals are happy with Mammoth and Alpine Meadows and Sierra-at-Tahoe and A-Basin and Copper and Bridger Bowl and Nub’s Nob and Perfect North and Elk and Plattekill and Berkshire East and Smuggs and Loon and Saddleback and, mostly, the Hood ski areas. And locals are generally less happy with Camelback and Seven Springs and Park City and Sunrise and Shasta and Stratton and, lately, former locals’ faves Sugarbush and Wildcat. And, as far as I can tell, Bachelor. Potential explanations for Hood happiness versus Bachelor blues abound, all of them partial, none completely satisfactory, all asterisked with the vagaries of skiing and skiers and weather and luck. But my sense is this: Meadows, Timberline, and Skibowl locals are generally content not because they have better skiing than everyplace else or because their ski areas are some grand bargain or because they’re not crowded or because they have the best lift systems or terrain parks or grooming or snow conditions, but because Hood, in its haphazard and confounding-to-outsiders borders and layout, has forced its varied operators to hyper-adapt to niche needs in the local market while liberating them from the all-things-to-everyone imperative thrust on isolated operations like Bachelor. They have to decide what they’re good at and be good at that all the time, because they have no other option. Hood operators can’t be Vail-owned Paoli Peaks, turning in 25-day ski seasons and saying well it’s Indiana what do you expect? They have to be independent Perfect North, striving always for triple-digit operating days and saying it’s Indiana and we’re doing this anyway because if we don’t you’ll stop coming and we’ll all be broke. In this way Hood is a snapshot of old skiing, pre-consolidation, pre-national pass, pre-social media platforms that flung open global windows onto local mountains. Other than Timberline summer parks no one is asking these places to be anything other than very good local ski areas serving rabid local skiers. And they’re doing a damn good job. Podcast Notes On Meadows and Timberline Lodge opening and closing dates One of the most baffling set of basic facts to get straight in American skiing is the number of ski areas on Mount Hood and the distinction between them. Part of the reason for this is the volcano’s famous summer skiing, which takes place not at either of the eponymous ski areas – Mt. Hood Meadows or Mt. Hood Skibowl – but at the awkwardly named Timberline Lodge, which sounds more like a hipster cocktail lounge with a 19th-century fur-trapper aesthetic than the name of a ski resort (which is why no one actually calls it “Timberline Lodge”; I do so only to avoid confusion with the ski area in West Virginia, because people are constantly getting Appalachian ski areas mixed up with those in the Cascades). I couldn’t find a comprehensive list of historic closing dates for Meadows and Timberline, but the basic distinction is this: Meadows tends to wrap winter sometime between late April and late May. Timberline goes into August and beyond when it can. Why doesn’t Meadows push its season when it is right next door and probably could? We discuss in the pod. On Riblet clips Fun fact about defunct-as-a-company-even-though-a-couple-hundred-of-their-machines-are-still-spinning Riblet chairlifts: rather than clamping on like a vice grip, the end of each chair is woven into the rope via something called an “insert clip.” I wrote about this in my Wildcat pod last year: On Alpental Chair 2 A small but vocal segment of Broseph McBros with nothing better to do always reflexively oppose the demolition of legacy fixed-grip lifts to make way for modern machines. Pack does a great job laying out why it’s harder to maintain older chairlifts than many skiers may think. I wrote about this here: On Blue’s breakover towers and unload ramp We also dropped photos of this into the video version of the pod: On the Cooper Spur land exchange Here’s a somewhat-dated and very biased-against-the-ski-area infographic summarizing the proposed land swap between Meadows and the U.S. Forest Service, from the Cooper Spur Wild & Free Coalition, an organization that “first came together in 2002 to fight Mt. Hood Meadows’ plans to develop a sprawling destination resort on the slopes of Mt. Hood near Cooper Spur”: While I find the sanctimonious language in this timeline off-putting, I’m more sympathetic to Enviro Bro here than I was with the eruption-detection controversy discussed up top. Opposing small-footprint, high-impact catastrophe-monitoring equipment on an active volcano to save five bushes but potentially endanger millions of human lives is foolish. But checking sprawling wilderness development by identifying smaller parcels adjacent to already-disturbed lands as alternative sites for denser, hopefully walkable, hopefully mixed-use projects is exactly the sort of thing that every mountain community ought to prioritize. On the combination of Summit and Timberline Lodge The small Summit Pass ski area in Government Camp operated as an independent entity from its 1927 founding until Timberline Lodge purchased the ski area in 2018. In 2021, the owners connected the two – at least in one direction. Skiers can move 4,540 vertical feet from the top of Timberline’s Palmer chair to the base of Summit. While Palmer tends to open late in the season and Summit tends to close early, and while skiers will have to ride shuttles back up to the Timberline lifts until the resort builds a much anticipated gondola connecting the full height, this is technically America’s largest lift-served vertical drop. On Meadows’ reciprocals Meadows only has three season pass reciprocal partners, but they’re all aspirational spots that passholders would actually travel for: Baker, Schweitzer, and Whitefish. I ask Pack why he continues to offer these exchanges even as larger ski areas such as Brundage and Tamarack move away from them. One bit of context I neglected to include, however, is that neighboring Timberline Lodge and Mount Hood Skibowl not only offer a joint pass, but are longtime members of Powder Alliance, which is an incredible regional reciprocal pass that’s free for passholders at any of these mountains: On Ski Broadmoor, Colorado Colorado Springs is less convenient to skiing than the name implies – skiers are driving a couple of hours, minimum, to access Monarch or the Summit County ski areas. So I was surprised, when I looked up Pack’s original home mountain of Ski Broadmoor, to see that it sat on the city’s outskirts: This was never a big ski area, with 600 vertical feet served by an “America The Beautiful Lift” that sounds as though it was named by Donald Trump: The “famous” Broadmoor Hotel built and operated the ski area, according to Colorado Ski History. They sold the hotel in 1986 to the city, which promptly sold it to Vail Associates (now Vail Resorts), in 1988. Vail closed the ski area in 1991 – the only mountain they ever surrendered on. I’ll update all my charts and such to reflect this soon. On pre-high-speed Keystone It’s kind of amazing that Keystone, which now spins seven high-speed chairlifts, didn’t install its first detachable until 1990, nearly a decade after neighboring Breckenridge installed the world’s first, in 1981. As with many resorts that have aggressively modernized, this means that Keystone once ran more chairlifts than it does today. When Pack started his ski career at the mountain in 1989, Keystone ran 10 frontside aerial lifts (8 doubles, 1 triple, 1 gondola) compared to just six today (2 doubles, 2 sixers, a high-speed quad, and a higher-capacity gondy). On Mountain Creek I’ve talked about the bananas-ness of Mountain Creek many times. I love this unhinged New Jersey bump in the same way I loved my crazy late uncle who would get wasted at the Bay City fireworks and yell at people driving Toyotas to “Buy American!” (This was the ‘80s in Michigan, dudes. I don’t know what to tell you. The auto industry was falling apart and everybody was tripping, especially dudes who worked in – or, in my uncle’s case, adjacent to (steel) – the auto industry.) On Intrawest One of the reasons I did this insane timeline project was so that I would no longer have to sink 30 minutes into Google every time someone said the word “Intrawest.” The timeline was a pain in the ass, but worth it, because now whenever I think “wait exactly what did Intrawest own and when?” I can just say “oh yeah I already did that here you go”: On Moonlight Basin and merging with Big Sky It’s kind of weird how many now-united ski areas started out as separate operations: Beaver Creek and Arrowhead (merged 1997), Canyons and Park City (2014), Whistler and Blackcomb (1997), Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley (connected via gondola in 2022), Carinthia and Mount Snow (1986), Sugarbush and Mount Ellen (connected via chairlift in 1995). Sometimes – Beaver Creek, Mount Snow – the terrain and culture mergers are seamless. Other times – Alpine and the Palisades side of what is now Palisades Tahoe – the connection feels like opening a store that sells four-wheelers and 74-piece high-end dinnerware sets. Like, these things don’t go together, Man. But when Big Sky absorbed Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks in 2013, everyone immediately forgot that it was ever any different. This suggests that Big Sky’s 2032 Yellowstone Club acquisition will be seamless.* *Kidding, Brah. Maybe. On Lehman Brothers Nearly two decades later, it’s still astonishing how quickly Lehman Brothers, in business for 158 years, collapsed in 2008. On the “mutiny” at Telluride Every now and then, a reader will ask the very reasonable question about why I never pay any attention to Telluride, one of America’s great ski resorts, and one that Pack once led. Mostly it’s because management is unstable, making long-term skier experience stories of the sort I mostly focus on hard to tell. And management is mostly unstable because the resort’s owner is, by all accounts, willful and boorish and sort of unhinged. Blevins, in The Colorado Sun’s “Outsider” newsletter earlier this week: A few months ago, locals in Telluride and Mountain Village began publicly blasting the resort’s owner, a rare revolt by a community that has grown weary of the erratic Chuck Horning. For years, residents around the resort had quietly lamented the antics and decisions of the temperamental Horning, the 81-year-old California real estate investor who acquired Telluride Ski & Golf Resort in 2004. It’s the only resort Horning has ever owned and over the last 21 years, he has fired several veteran ski area executives — including, earlier this year, his son, Chad. Now, unnamed locals have launched a website, publicly detailing the resort owner’s messy management of the Telluride ski area and other businesses across the country. “For years, Chuck Horning has caused harm to us all, both individually and collectively,” reads the opening paragraph of ChuckChuck.ski — which originated when a Telluride councilman in March said that it was “time to chuck Chuck.” “The community deserves something better. For years, we’ve whispered about the stories, the incidents, the poor decisions we’ve witnessed. Those stories should no longer be kept secret from everyone that relies on our ski resort for our wellbeing.” The chuckchuck.ski site drags skeletons out of Horning’s closet. There are a lot of skeletons in there. The website details a long history of lawsuits across the country accusing Horning and the Newport Federal Financial investment firm he founded in 1970 of fraud. It’s a pretty amazing site. On Bogus Basin I was surprised that ostensibly for-profit Meadows regularly re-invests 100 percent of profits into the ski area. Such a model is more typical for explicitly nonprofit outfits such as Bogus Basin, Idaho. Longtime GM Brad Wilson outlined how that ski area functions a few years back: The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

   August 02, 2025·1h 19min
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