The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

WhoYesterday, I interviewed Brent Gardner, founder of the Savage Mountain Collective, about his Substack newsletter. Today (well, we recorded it yesterday), he interviewed me. Why do I like SnoSportSkiing? Can I provide some examples of people who made good SnoSportSkiing centers? What are the challenges in reporting on SnoSportSkiing centers? Do MultiMegaMountainSnoSportSkiing passes grow the sport? What danger to SnoSportSkiing am I probably not writing enough about? Where would I most like to enjoy SnoSportSkiing this winter? If you would like to listen to me talk about such things, boy are you in the right place.Remember to subscribe to Savage Mountain Collective. Seriously Brent’s crushing it over there with ski content:Date RecordedNov. 11, 2026TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomThe take up top: more new Indy Pass partners Stuart Winchester: Welcome to STORM! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Thursday, November 12th, 2026.02:22:49.000 --> 02:23:04.000Stuart Winchester: Today on The Storm, we flip the script as Brent Gardner of the Savage Mountain Collective grills me on what it is that I love so much about skiing, what I think of the current multi-mountain pass landscape, and what makes a great ski area.02:23:04.000 --> 02:23:15.000Stuart Winchester: Also, a bunch of new partners on IndiePass, including on the Discount Allied program, Whiteface Gore and Bel Air. We will get into all of that right here.02:23:15.000 --> 02:23:20.000Stuart Winchester: All right, I want to start with IndiePass, and this is…02:23:20.000 --> 02:23:35.000Stuart Winchester: They just keep going, man. They just keep going and going and going, and, and I have a longer write-up of this that I put out on stormskiing.com, and, and that’s where I break down all the episodes or, uh, all the resorts, but Indy Pass today.02:23:35.000 --> 02:23:42.000Stuart Winchester: Added, on top of all the ski areas that they already had added, the hundreds that they have, they added.02:23:42.000 --> 02:23:57.000Stuart Winchester: 10 new mountains, uh, sort of. Sort of 10 new mountains. And they also added 5 cross-country, and then their allied program, they added Bel Air Gore Whiteface. So let me go through these things one at a time. So the… the… the Alpine Mountains first. So when I say Alpine, I just mean.02:23:57.000 --> 02:24:03.000Stuart Winchester: Chairlifts and, uh, downhill. Uh, basically a lift served ski area.02:24:03.000 --> 02:24:18.000Stuart Winchester: They, one of them is not new. So there’s, there’s nine altogether. And at this point, most of the growth is coming outside of the United States simply because pretty much everyone who has joined a pass or wants to join a pass or will join a pass has joined a pass.02:24:18.000 --> 02:24:34.000Stuart Winchester: And you’ll find some exceptions here and there and a few additions. Uh, but, but these 10 ski areas, one of them is Cherry Peak in Utah. And Cherry Peak, if you’re not familiar, is actually one of the newer ski areas in the country. It’s, it’s up there near Beaver Mountain in North.02:24:34.000 --> 02:24:46.000Stuart Winchester: Utah. It’s in the Logan metro area, and it opened, I think, in 2014, and it’s been an Indy Allied partner for a long time. And Indy Allied is just a program where.02:24:46.000 --> 02:24:53.000Stuart Winchester: If you are an Indy Allied member, then Indy Pass holders get half off.02:24:53.000 --> 02:25:04.000Stuart Winchester: on weekdays, 25% off on weekends and holidays of your window lift ticket rate, and your pass holders are able to add on an Indy add-on pass.02:25:04.000 --> 02:25:05.000Stuart Winchester: So…02:25:05.000 --> 02:25:09.000Stuart Winchester: It’s a program that has…02:25:09.000 --> 02:25:19.000Stuart Winchester: waxed and waned over the years. You know, Doug Fish announced it, I think, in 2022, and at first it was a lot of New England ski areas, and he did it.02:25:19.000 --> 02:25:29.000Stuart Winchester: really because he didn’t want to add too much density there in New England. So, a lot of the initial ski areas on there.02:25:29.000 --> 02:25:35.000Stuart Winchester: were McIntyre and King Pine and Whaleback.02:25:35.000 --> 02:25:38.000Stuart Winchester: And Middlebury Snow Bowl in Vermont.02:25:38.000 --> 02:25:50.000Stuart Winchester: And what ended up happening was all of those mountains ended up shifting off the Allied program to become full IndyPass partners. And that was just part of the product’s evolution, as Eric Mogenson, when he bought the pass in 2023.02:25:50.000 --> 02:26:06.000Stuart Winchester: had data to show that the density of ski areas, uh, was not, in fact, cannibalizing season passes for local ski areas, which was their fear. That if you had too many ski areas in one region… and New England is very dense with ski areas, okay? There’s 100 ski areas in New England, and this…02:26:06.000 --> 02:26:16.000Stuart Winchester: the whole six-state region is about two-thirds the size of Colorado, which has 30 ski areas, so it gives you a sense. I mean, when you’re up on, say, Mount Sunapee.02:26:16.000 --> 02:26:24.000Stuart Winchester: or Okemo, you can look around and see a half-dozen other ski areas. They’re very close together. So…02:26:24.000 --> 02:26:29.000Stuart Winchester: It was a legitimate fear. It turned out to be unfounded, as far as…02:26:29.000 --> 02:26:44.000Stuart Winchester: All the data that I can see, I haven’t seen an instance yet of where Indy Pass has cost season pass holders. So, so Cherry Peak is switching from allied to full, and that actually leaves just one ski area in the entire country on the allied program.02:26:44.000 --> 02:26:59.000Stuart Winchester: which is Mount Ripley in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and that’s a fun little ski area. It’s right across the river from Michigan Tech. I’ve skied there. All the Michigan Tech students get it for free. Uh, it’s also right down the road from Mount Bohemia with their $99 season pass, so…02:26:59.000 --> 02:27:06.000Stuart Winchester: Really, and they get 300 inches of snow a year, so they get lake effect off Lake Superior, and it’s good, light, high-quality snow.02:27:06.000 --> 02:27:22.000Stuart Winchester: So Ripley’s great, only 400 feet of vertical, but a lot, a lot of fun. Anyway, that is the last one left on Allied, except, and I guess I’ll do Allied first because I’m talking about it. Now, the three, we call them the Orda Mountains, and Orda stands for Olympic Regional Development Auth.02:27:22.000 --> 02:27:27.000Stuart Winchester: These three ski areas, Bel Air, Gore, and Whiteface, are owned by the state of New York.02:27:27.000 --> 02:27:29.000Stuart Winchester: And…02:27:29.000 --> 02:27:34.000Stuart Winchester: They were on the Max Pass, which was the immediate predecessor to the Icon Pass.02:27:34.000 --> 02:27:36.000Stuart Winchester: For whatever reason.02:27:36.000 --> 02:27:38.000Stuart Winchester: When…02:27:38.000 --> 02:27:40.000Stuart … Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoBrent Gardner, founder of the Savage Mountain Collective newsletter. Subscribe here:Date RecordedNov. 11, 2026About Savage Mountain CollectiveFrom Savage Mountain Collective’s “about” page:Skiing was my job.Then I blew out my knee, and for twenty-two years it wasn’t anything at all.I won’t pretend that was a tragedy. I had a life. It was a good one. But there’s a specific kind of quiet that settles in when the thing you organized yourself around becomes a thing you used to do. You stop reading forecasts. You stop knowing what the skis are called. Someone mentions a resort and you nod like you’ve been.Twenty-two years is a long time to nod.Then I started skiing again, fully prepared to find out I’d lost it.I hadn’t lost it. I’d just misplaced it.That’s what this is.Beacon and Probe is the SMC ski report: what the Wasatch forecast actually means, when to book, and what’s worth your time. Free.Savage Mountain Collective is a newsletter and a podcast about building a life around mountains you don’t live in.Because most of us don’t live in them. We live in Washington and Boston and Philadelphia and Columbus. We have jobs and kids and a mortgage and a three-hour drive to something that generously calls itself vertical. We plan around the mountains. We dream about them. We refresh weather models we know we shouldn’t trust. We start thinking about next winter before this one is over.That’s the sickness. It’s also the point.Ski media mostly doesn’t write for us. It writes about people who live in Jackson, ski 120 days, and got their first pair at three. That’s a fine story. It’s just not most people’s story, and it’s definitely not the story of someone trying to find their way back in.So this is the other conversation.What you get: gear reviews that tell you what the press release didn’t. Trip logistics from someone who has actually flown east-to-west with skis and family and survived. Honest writing about the East, which is better than the industry admits and which I intend to keep saying until somebody makes me stop. A lot of Utah, because that’s where I go. And every so often, something about what it means to chase a physical thing at an age when the culture would rather you took up golf.Plus the podcast, where I talk to friends, to people who know this world far better than I do, and to anyone with a good mountain story.If you’re a weekend skier, a someday skier, or someone who has ever timed a FedEx delivery around a spouse’s work schedule, you’re in the right place.Pull up a chair.BrentWhy I interviewed himWe need more ski writing that is entertaining, varied, frequent, and thorough.We need more ski writing that is daring, interesting, and optimistic.And we need more ski writing that is reflective, self-aware, and rooted in historical context.We need more ski writing like what Brent is producing at Savage Mountain Collective. He’s crushing it. If you like The Storm, you’ll like Savage Mountain Collective. Put it in your inbox:TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomThe Take up TopStuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Wednesday, November 11th, 2026. It is Veterans Day. Thank you very much to all who served in our country’s armed forces.02:01:07.000 --> 02:01:22.000Stuart Winchester: Today on The Storm, an up-and-coming voice in ski media tells us why Salt Lake City is the capital of U.S. skiing, why we’re living in skiing’s golden age, and why Utah should, in fact, build the gondola up.02:01:22.000 --> 02:01:24.000Stuart Winchester: Little Cottonwood Canyon.02:01:24.000 --> 02:01:31.000Stuart Winchester: First, though, I gotta send up a red alert, and I gotta do this because we…02:01:32.000 --> 02:01:38.000Stuart Winchester: Just got news of another ski area closing, and I do not like.02:01:38.000 --> 02:01:49.000Stuart Winchester: these stories, because there’s nothing wrong with the ski area, uh, the family is simply moving on from it. So, the ski area in question is an IndyPass partner.02:01:49.000 --> 02:01:51.000Stuart Winchester: It is…02:01:51.000 --> 02:01:53.000Stuart Winchester: Snow Star, Illinois.02:01:53.000 --> 02:02:03.000Stuart Winchester: And Snowstar is a little place. It’s only been opened since 1981. And what that tells you, and there’s a lot of ski areas that opened in, in the, around that time.02:02:03.000 --> 02:02:13.000Stuart Winchester: And that’s because that’s when the snowmaking technology really caught up, where it could be in a place like Snowstar, which is not a great snow pocket. Their… their average…02:02:14.000 --> 02:02:25.000Stuart Winchester: Inches of snowfall per winter is 39, and I think that’s probably an exaggeration. So it’s a little place, 262 vertical feet, base elevation’s only at 528 feet.02:02:25.000 --> 02:02:30.000Stuart Winchester: 28 acres of skiing. And, you know, they’ve got…02:02:30.000 --> 02:02:37.000Stuart Winchester: Nice little lift fleet, they got 2 fixed grip quads, they got 2 double chairs, they got 1 carpet, so 5 lifts total.02:02:37.000 --> 02:02:44.000Stuart Winchester: And the thing about Snowstar and why this is such a drag.02:02:44.000 --> 02:02:59.000Stuart Winchester: to lose a place like this, and why we can’t lose a place like this, is that, as you all know, it is almost impossible to build a new ski area in the United States of America in 2026. So, once these places go.02:02:59.000 --> 02:03:03.000Stuart Winchester: They are gone. And this is Snow Star right here, okay?02:03:03.000 --> 02:03:05.000Stuart Winchester: And all the other marks on the map.02:03:05.000 --> 02:03:23.000Stuart Winchester: Our other ski areas, right? So up here we have Chestnut Mountain in Illinois. Right over here we have Sundown in Iowa. And those are, that’s, they look close, but they’re not, right? So here’s Chicago. Here’s, if you’re looking at the, at the map on storm ski.com or YouTube storm ski journal.02:03:24.000 --> 02:03:27.000Stuart Winchester: Essentially, let me describe this for you if you’re not.02:03:27.000 --> 02:03:32.000Stuart Winchester: This is the only… Snowstar is the only ski area.02:03:32.000 --> 02:03:34.000Stuart Winchester: in what they call.02:03:34.000 --> 02:03:35.000Stuart Winchester: Bye.02:03:36.000 --> 02:03:52.000Stuart Winchester: So, sorry, it’s the only ski area in this area. I don’t know if this is, if this is Quad Cities or if Quad Cities are up here. So, someone, someone enlightened me, because there was a statement from the Quad Cities division of something in a lot of the news reports I read. So, let’s go to some of those news reports, because.02:03:52.000 --> 02:03:54.000Stuart Winchester: I want to…02:03:55.000 --> 02:04:10.000Stuart Winchester: share with you what details we have. So, this is reporting from KWQC TV station out there. It says, Snowstar owners to step down. Ski Snow War Hill won’t open this season.02:04:10.000 --> 02:04:17.000Stuart Winchester: Snow stars skiing in Snowboard Hills won’t be … Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoBelinda Trembath, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Whistler Blackcomb, British ColumbiaDate RecordedNov. 9, 2026About WhistlerOwned by: Vail Resorts, which also owns:Year founded: 1966 (Whistler), 1980 (Blackcomb), merged 1997Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited access* Epic Local Pass: 10 holiday-restricted days shared with Vail Mountain and Beaver Creek, both in Colorado* Epic Day Pass: one to seven days, with or without restricted days included, on the top tier only* Edge Card (restricted to residents of Washington and British Columbia): available in 2-, 5-, and 10-day increments, with or without holiday restrictions; 5- and 10-day passes purchased by April 12, 2026 include unlimited access from opening day through Friday, Dec. 11, 2026; 5- and 10-day passes purchased from April 13, 2026 to May 25, 2026 include one bonus dayBase elevation: 2,215 feet/675 metersSummit elevation: 7,159 feet/2,182 metersVertical drop: 5,280 feet/1,507 metersSkiable acres: 8,171Average annual snowfall: 404 inches/1,170 centimetersLift count: 31 (5 gondolas, 1 pulse gondola, 1 eight-pack, 4 six-packs, 8 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 triples, 1 T-bar, 7 carpets)Why I interviewed herIn August, I wrote a piece describing ski area operators’ low-key panic that U.S. America would do the most U.S. American thing possible and switch to permanent daylight savings time:While reporting that story, I discovered something kind of astonishing: Canada - or at least, British Columbia - had out America-ed America, saying “yes we’d like the sun to rise after 9 a.m. at the height of winter”:And I thought “well that’s gonna be a problem.” Maybe especially for the largest ski resort on the continent, which had little choice but to go along with the time change.And it was time for a Whistler update anyway. Because it’s Whistler and because it had been a couple years since my last pod and because apparently Dr. Seuss designed their new Showcase chairlift:TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomThe take up top: Peak Resorts brass back in the gameStuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Tuesday, November 10th, 2026.01:06:38.000 --> 01:06:54.000Stuart Winchester: Today on The Storm, Whistler head Belinda Trimbath joins us to break down what permanent daylight savings time means for North America’s largest ski area. And she will also give us an overview of the new showcase fixed trip quad.01:06:54.000 --> 01:07:02.000Stuart Winchester: replacing the high elevation T-bar on Blackcomb, including why this machine will load lower than the old lift.01:07:02.000 --> 01:07:13.000Stuart Winchester: Also, a cool local multi-mountain pass that most of you have probably never heard of, and the former owners of Peak Resorts aim to get back into the ski business?01:07:14.000 --> 01:07:18.000Stuart Winchester: We’ll get to all that in just a moment. First, I want to thank…01:07:18.000 --> 01:07:23.000Stuart Winchester: My longtime partner, Profile Search International.01:07:23.000 --> 01:07:25.000Stuart Winchester: Profile search.01:07:25.000 --> 01:07:30.000Stuart Winchester: is the Ski Industry Talent Acquisition Experts.01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:41.000Stuart Winchester: Profile Search has more than 30 years of experience as the only executive search and recruitment firm in the entire world that focuses 100% on the ski industry.01:07:41.000 --> 01:07:53.000Stuart Winchester: As you know, whether you’re a skier or a ski area operator, running a ski area is only getting more complicated, and sometimes it is difficult to understand what you even need to compete.01:07:53.000 --> 01:07:56.000Stuart Winchester: Let alone who can help you to do that.01:07:56.000 --> 01:08:11.000Stuart Winchester: This is where Profile Search comes in. They have an intimate understanding of what it takes to run a modern ski area, and, more important, they know who the people are who can help you make that happen, and they know who’s available.01:08:11.000 --> 01:08:18.000Stuart Winchester: Profile search has offices in the United States and Canada, and they can find and negotiate with the right leaders for your team.01:08:18.000 --> 01:08:31.000Stuart Winchester: You can reach out to Profile Search directly at profilesearch.com, or contact them by email or phone, or send me a note, and I will connect you directly with this expert team.01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:43.000Stuart Winchester: Alright, let’s start with the former owners of Peak Resorts possibly getting back into skiing. So, this is a really interesting headline.01:08:44.000 --> 01:09:00.000Stuart Winchester: That popped up last week, and I didn’t have time to address it because it broke late in the week when I was done recording podcasts. The headline is Brothers Who Sold $264 Million Ski Empire to Vail Resorts Set to Buy Snowy Range Ski Area.01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:05.000Stuart Winchester: So, the brothers that they are referring to are… the Boyd brothers.01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:10.000Stuart Winchester: And the article, this is from Cowboy State Daily, this is a Wyoming newspaper.01:09:11.000 --> 01:09:22.000Stuart Winchester: Quote, In 2019, the Boyd family sold its $264 million Peak Resorts ski empire to Vail Resorts. Now, three Boyd brothers are staging a return, and it’s happening in Wyoming.01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:35.000Stuart Winchester: Jesse Boyd confirmed to Cowboy State Daily that he, his brothers Jason and Joshua, and his best friend Brendan Ryan are buying Snowy Range Ski Area west of Laramie.01:09:35.000 --> 01:09:45.000Stuart Winchester: Alright, so Snowy Range is interesting. This is the ski area that actually joined Icon Pass this year on the 2-day tier.01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:58.000Stuart Winchester: And the relationship makes more sense than maybe it sounds like from a distance. So, Snowy Range is kind of small, uh, but it is there in southeast Wyoming, and the closest big ski area to it is Steamboat.01:09:58.000 --> 01:10:15.000Stuart Winchester: So for years and years, Snowy Range had this special pass deal with Steamboat where you could add a five day Steamboat pass onto your Snowy Range season pass for some reasonable amount. It was $300 or something, and I could go look up the exact prices, but.01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:17.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, this year…01:10:17.000 --> 01:10:22.000Stuart Winchester: Altera replaced that, Altera meaning Steamboat owner Altera.01:10:22.000 --> 01:10:25.000Stuart Winchester: Replace that with the…01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:41.000Stuart Winchester: option for Snowy Range Pass holders to buy a 3-day Icon Session Pass, which I’ve already told you is a terrible product, but you can get half off of that product, and I guess the good ne… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoJohn Paul Bradley, General Manager of Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort, New MexicoDate RecordedNov. 9, 2026About SipapuOwned by: Mountain Capital Partners, which also owns:Year founded: 1952Pass affiliations: Unlimited on Power Pass, Power Pass Select, and Power Pass CoreBase elevation: 8,200 feetSummit elevation: 9,255 feetVertical drop: 1,055 feetSkiable acres: 189Average annual snowfall: 185 inchesLift count: 6 (1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets)Why I interviewed himThat’s a nice trailmap, built out considerably since MCP Managing Partner James Coleman purchased the bump from the founding Bolander family in 2000.But it’s a McNothingStuffing compared to how Sipapu could scale under an expansion plan that the U.S. Forest Service recently accepted for environmental review:Here’s the proposed lift specs - proposed lifts A and B below match with the long dotted lines above:Absurdly, amazingly, the gray-shaded area on the map above represents the entirety of the legacy ski area:Can they do it? I hope so.TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomTake up Top - Ikon’s new partnersStuart Winchester: All right, let’s start today with changes to the Icon Pass. I say changes, but really I mean changes and additions. Icon Pass just keeps adding mountains at an unbelievable rate. They’ve added more than 40 ski areas.01:10:56.000 --> 01:11:07.000Stuart Winchester: in the past 2 years, and when I say past 2 years, I really just mean since spring of 2025, so really it hasn’t even been 2 years since they’ve added all these mountains.01:11:07.000 --> 01:11:22.000Stuart Winchester: And some of them are the little bonus mountains, and some are full partners. One of the changes, though, that is not a new mountain that Deer Valley added, or that Icon added today, was a little bit of a departure for Icon Pass.01:11:22.000 --> 01:11:24.000Stuart Winchester: So…01:11:24.000 --> 01:11:37.000Stuart Winchester: when the Icon Pass debuted in 2018, all of the ski areas that were on Icon Pass at the time were included on the Icon Base Pass, and they… many of them had blackouts, as many of them do today, but.01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:45.000Stuart Winchester: Jackson Hole, Alta, Aspen, all of those mountains, Deer Valley, were on the Icon Base Pass with five days.01:11:45.000 --> 01:11:47.000Stuart Winchester: In 2020.01:11:47.000 --> 01:11:55.000Stuart Winchester: Jackson Hole and Aspen left Icon Base, and they went to something called Icon Base Plus, and it was…01:11:55.000 --> 01:12:04.000Stuart Winchester: an add-on you could buy, but in general, most people would still get the full Icon Pass. Uh, in 2022, Deer Valley and Alta.01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:16.000Stuart Winchester: followed Jackson Hole and Aspen off of the Icon Base Pass, and Sun Valley and Snow Basin, which had newly joined after leaving the Epic Pass, decided to also be exclusively for Icon Base.01:12:16.000 --> 01:12:18.000Stuart Winchester: But we started to see…01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:30.000Stuart Winchester: what we’ve always seen with Altera, the ability to be really creative with the IconPass, and one of the things that they’ve done is change access.01:12:30.000 --> 01:12:33.000Stuart Winchester: Quite a bit. And they’ve done this to…01:12:33.000 --> 01:12:37.000Stuart Winchester: Experiment to flex to try to get the crowd levels correct.01:12:37.000 --> 01:12:52.000Stuart Winchester: And sometimes they take away access, and sometimes they add access. So in this case, the Deer Valley access they took away on IconBase in 2022, Altera, which owns Deer Valley and IconPass, of course.01:12:52.000 --> 01:13:08.000Stuart Winchester: is adding some Icon Base Pass access back. They’re adding 3 days, though, not 5, so this is a unique thing. There is no other ski area on Icon Base Pass that has a 3-day tier, and I’m not exactly sure.01:13:08.000 --> 01:13:20.000Stuart Winchester: how they arrived at that three days. I am scheduled to host the president of Deer Valley, Todd Bennett, very soon on the podcast, and I will ask him to break this down for us. But nonetheless, if you have an Icon Base Pass, you do get three days.01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:29.000Stuart Winchester: at Deer Valley on it this year. Remember, Deer Valley is only for skiers, no snowboarders allowed, similar to Alta up the road. And…01:13:29.000 --> 01:13:39.000Stuart Winchester: Deer Valley has nearly tripled in size over the past 3 seasons, so if you haven’t been to Deer Valley in a while.01:13:39.000 --> 01:13:44.000Stuart Winchester: I mean, it already felt pretty big, because it’s Utah, and you can ski almost anywhere, but…01:13:44.000 --> 01:13:46.000Stuart Winchester: They added…01:13:46.000 --> 01:14:02.000Stuart Winchester: more than the size of Deer Valley to the back end of it, basically they call it the Wasatch Back, so if you keep driving out of Park City, and it’s actually a lot more pleasant to get to Deer Valley now, because what the expansion allowed them to do was to build a new village, the Deer Valley East Village.01:14:02.000 --> 01:14:14.000Stuart Winchester: You don’t have to drive through Park City to get there anymore, and Park City traffic is always a nightmare, so what you can do is just get off the highway, make one turn, and there you are in Deer Valley East Village, and the…01:14:14.000 --> 01:14:20.000Stuart Winchester: new Lyft network connects really seamlessly to Legacy Deer Valley, so…01:14:20.000 --> 01:14:25.000Stuart Winchester: They’ve done a really good job with it. I’ve not skied the entire expansion.01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:41.000Stuart Winchester: But I skied quite a bit of it the year before last and was really impressed with the way that the whole thing was coming together. So, you know, Deer Valley is not to be mistaken for cottonwood skiing. It is a very different thing. It is positioned differently. It is a, a different.01:14:41.000 --> 01:14:48.000Stuart Winchester: level and kind of skiing, even though they’re really right next door to each other, but uh… but that is, I think, cool.01:14:48.000 --> 01:15:01.000Stuart Winchester: of Icon to do that, and Altera to do that, and to give a little access where they have a little more to give. You know, they have 5,000 acres to fill, and they used to have 2,000, and I’d imagine you could probably fit a few more skiers on there, especially when you’re excluding snowboarders.01:15:01.000 --> 01:15:04.000Stuart Winchester: This echoes what…01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:13.000Stuart Winchester: Icon Pass did with the Aspen Mountains, right? I mentioned that Aspen had left the Icon Base Pass in 2020, and…01:15:13.000 --> 01:15:20.000Stuart Winchester: This past year, this past spring, for the 2026-27 ski season, Aspen said, you know what?01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:27.000Stuart Winchester: That still makes sense for Aspen M… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoJohn Taylor, principal at John H. Taylor Consulting, reporting for the Vail Daily. Email John at [email protected] Date RecordedNov. 5, 2026About Vail ResortsAbout the Epic PassWhy I interviewed himVail Resorts (stock ticker MTN), is in the midst of a proxy battle, which is Finance Bro speak for when individuals whom the company doesn’t want on their board of directors are nominated to be on their board of directors. Professional Finance Bro James Early joined me on the pod yesterday to help us understand Vail’s stock journey, and why all these unwelcome folks (Vail refers to them as “dissident” candidates) might be disappointed enough with MTN’s financial performance to try joining the board of a company that doesn’t want them on its board.It was an awesome conversation, but it was just part one of my blockbuster serial: Proxy Bros 2026. For part two, I reached out to John Taylor, a former business reporter who retired to Vail a decade ago but is not retired enough to not absolutely crush a series on MTN’s drama for the Vail Daily:* Oct. 30: Florida financier Meyer lays out detailed plan for Vail Resorts if named to board* Oct. 31: Baron, Prince duke it out as Vail Resorts proxy battle heats up in flurry of filings* Nov. 3: Oasis unloads on Vail Resorts in proxy fight, citing long lines, overcrowding, rising food prices* Nov. 4: Halftime in Vail Resorts proxy battle is prime time for assessing all the playersTaylor describes proxy fights as an “arcane” world, but he does a nice job of making it legible for McBrosephs like me. I’ve been working on a longer written overview of everything that’s been going down, but - again - the new pod format gives me more latitude to bring in smart people to talk about complicated things while I write 8,000-word stories that should be eight one-thousand word stories.TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomStuart Winchester: Okay. My guest today has been reporting on Vail Resort’s proxy fight for the Vail Daily. He is the principal for John H. Taylor Consulting and a former Forbes bureau chief and business reporter for the St. Pete Times, Florida Trend, and Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money Magazine.00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:55.000Stuart Winchester: He eventually pivoted doing research for money managers and built a team of researchers at the Duane Kniff firm, where they managed roughly $11 billion in assets. He retired to Vail in 2017. He is also a member of the board of advisors to the Rogel Foundation.00:24:55.000 --> 00:25:01.000Stuart Winchester: Cancer Center. John Taylor is my guest. John, welcome to The Storm. How is life in Vail, Colorado today?00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:13.000John Taylor: Well, there’s a little bit of snow up there at the top, but alas, it’s supposed to be mid-50s next week, so not sure that they’re gonna have much open other than the usual two runs and one lift.00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:20.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that’s a fine bull elk behind you. Is that… is that a trophy of yours?00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:22.000John Taylor: No, it is not. I bought this house furnished.00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:31.000John Taylor: And we originally thought we would get rid of that, but the owners told me that it cost them $30,000.00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:25.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:46.000John Taylor: So that was one factor in keeping it, and the second was I couldn’t figure out how the hell we were going to get it out of here. And so, it’s interesting, because little kids will come in and look at it, and they’ll point and go, oh my god, look how big that is. I say, go upstairs and look at the back.00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:33.000Stuart Winchester: Oh!00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:56.000Stuart Winchester: 30 grand, man, I should become a taxidermist. I didn’t realize it was that lucrative.00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:57.000John Taylor: Well, just to give you an idea how dumb I am, Stuart, I had a bear…00:25:57.000 --> 00:26:10.000John Taylor: And on the other wall And somebody asked me if they could have it. And I went, oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead, take it. And then the owners told me that was $3,000. I said.00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:03.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:11.000Stuart Winchester: Oh my gosh.00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:17.000Stuart Winchester: Well, there you go. All right, John, so let’s get into this Vale proxy fight.00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:33.000Stuart Winchester: I have a pretty educated audience, but why don’t you start us off with a little proxy fight 101. You’ve called it a very arcane world. So what is a proxy fight and who are the players in Vale’s proxy fight right now?00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:40.000John Taylor: Okay, a proxy fight is pretty simple, because it all comes down to anyone who owns stock in Vail Resorts can vote.00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:47.000John Taylor: Uh, and X percent probably never do in any of these elections, but, uh, so.00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:50.000John Taylor: They’re entitled to vote.00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:58.000John Taylor: Management will put up, in this case, nine incumbent directors for re-election.00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:15.000John Taylor: And you can elect, if you are a shareholder, to nominate your own board candidates. In this case, there is a group based in Hong Kong called Oasis Management that owns about 9.6% of the stock.00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:28.000John Taylor: And they originally put up four, uh, board candidates, including Peekaboo Street, um, and I guess the other well-known name was, uh, Bob Chapek, who was the former CEO of Disney.00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:30.000John Taylor: And…00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:42.000John Taylor: Another sort of weird sidelight to this is one investor who owns almost no stock nominated himself for a board seat. And so.00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:45.000John Taylor: Technically, there… so what happens is…00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:55.000John Taylor: Both of these sides are soliciting. They get a list of every shareholder. So it’s equal. Everybody has access to this. It goes out.00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:53.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:57.000John Taylor: You have…00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:14.000John Taylor: pretty much an endless stream of what they call proxy solicitations, because I could get one from Vail Resorts, read it, and go, oh, this makes great sense, I’m gonna vote for all of their nine guys. Then two days later, I get one from Oasis, and it’s attacking Vail Resorts and criticizing it for this, that, and the other thing, and go.00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:10.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:21.000John Taylor: oh, you know, I sort of believe that, so I’m gonna not, you know, vote for their guys. So, in the end, um…00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:29.000John Taylor: it’s basically a simple election. Now, where this becomes much more complicated, or pe… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoJames Early, CEO of Alpine House Research (known as Curia Financial when we spoke)Date RecordedNov. 5, 2026The Takes Up TopI briefly discuss Indy Pass’ rad new destination upgrade, which gives skiers an extra three days to split among 13 destination resorts in North America and Europe starting at $199 adult and $129 kids. I’ll write a longer piece on this, but here’s a teaser:I also talk about Jackson Hole’s Golden Ticket program, which gets season passholders at any ski area half off lift tickets on at least 39 dates over the 2026-27 ski season. As an aside, Jackson Hole enters the ignominous $300-plus lift ticket club, with a $339 peak-day walk-up rate for this winter:About Vail ResortsAbout the Epic PassWhy I interviewed himAs most of you know, I nearly dropped dead two years ago. I was pretty happy when I didn’t, and wrote what was essentially a gratitude post about all the things that were cool about being alive. One of the things I mentioned was the Motley Fool investment site.The Motley Fool, like investing itself, is a sprawling, baffling place. But at its heart, it is a stock recommendation site with a philosophy of identifying good companies, buying and holding them long term, and ignoring daily market fluctuations. I’ve subscribed to their basic services for years, and have found that if I just do what they say (mostly, counterintuitively, nothing), my monies do good.Anyway, James is a skier and an investor, and he reached out when I wrote that. I recognized his name from Fool bylines - he ran an income investor portfolio at the site that beat the S&P 500 for 10 consecutive years. He’d long ago moved on from Motley Fool, but we started up a dialogue, and he invited me onto his Curia Financial podcast last year, where I made a relatively bullish argument for skiing in general, and a relatively bearish argument for Vail Resorts’ growth prospects as the company reached the limit of how many skiers it could squeeze into a static portfolio.Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. A Hong Kong-based company called Oasis has accumulated a 9.6 percent stake in MTN stock, and is waging a proxy battle to replace two sitting Vail Resorts board members with its own nominees: former Disney CEO Bob Chapek a mysterious fellow by the name of M. Ashton Hudson. Meanwhile, Gregory S. Meyer, a Florida-based financier, nominated himself for a board position and pulled together an impressive document outlining how he would steer Vail Resorts toward growth. One thing all of these parties have in common is that they believe Vail’s Epic Pass-united, 42-resort portfolio is the company’s greatest strength and therefore have no desire to break up the company. Adding to the confusion is Matthew Prince’s ongoing, unrelated pressure campaign to purchase Park City from Vail Resorts.It’s all very confusing, and I recorded another podcast today with John Taylor, a seasoned business reporter who’s been documenting the proxy drama for the Vial Daily. I’ll release that deep analysis of the proxy battle tomorrow, but first I wanted to get with James to see how MTN stock looks from an investor’s point of view. Because looking at the numbers, Vail’s growth story seems to have stopped when resort acquisitions did:But is this just a natural equilibrium that many companies reach when they’ve maxed out their addressable market, or is it a pause in a company that’s shifting from growth-by-acquisition to growth-by-a-strategy-it-hasn’t-found yet. Could Vail, for example, get back to adding Epic Pass partners, as Alterra has continued to accumulate in large numbers for its Ikon Pass?Or did Vail’s 2021 Epic Pass price cuts ultimately undermine the company’s growth by prioritizing volume over experience?And how realistic is it to expect lift tickets to fill the 12 percent Epic Pass unit sales drop Vail reported in September after the company spent two decades destroying the product?And how much does stock price even tell us? After all, some of the largest companies in the world stumbled mightily on their journey to greatness:James, with his deep understanding of the stock market and Vail Resorts’ story, helps center us.TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomThe takes up top:Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. It is Thursday, November 5th, 2026. There is so much happening.01:57:07.000 --> 01:57:15.000Stuart Winchester: Today on The Storm, a seasoned investor breaks down the fundamentals behind Vail Resorts’ declining stock price.01:57:15.000 --> 01:57:22.000Stuart Winchester: why he thinks Vale’s growth days are over, and whether Epic should be fighting Icon for marquee partners.01:57:22.000 --> 01:57:28.000Stuart Winchester: Plus, an IndyPass destination upgrade, and how to get half off at Jackson Hole on 39 dates this season?01:57:28.000 --> 01:57:33.000Stuart Winchester: Let’s get into it all right now. I’m the storm. First.01:57:33.000 --> 01:57:36.000Stuart Winchester: I will be headed to New England tomorrow.01:57:36.000 --> 01:57:52.000Stuart Winchester: I love New England. I don’t love driving in New England, but I like being in New England. And I will be at the first New England Snovana show, which is at the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Marlboro, Mass. That is not in Boston, west suburbs-ish, I don’t know. Boston folks, correct me if I’m wrong.01:57:52.000 --> 01:58:06.000Stuart Winchester: But it’s a Boston-ish event, easy to get to from anywhere in New England, and I will be doing two live interviews on stage. Friday, tomorrow, at 5.30 Eastern, I will be interviewing Eric Mogensen.01:58:06.000 --> 01:58:14.000Stuart Winchester: who runs Black Mountain, he runs the IndiePass, and we’re certainly going to talk about this new destination product he has, and he runs Entebeni System.01:58:14.000 --> 01:58:29.000Stuart Winchester: Supplier for independent ski areas. Then on Saturday at 2:05 on the main stage, I will be interviewing Killington managing partner Bill Gross and longtime Killington president Mike Salamano. That one is going to be awesome.01:58:29.000 --> 01:58:47.000Stuart Winchester: Love Killington. Sunday, my good buddy, Sean Sutner, will be interviewing the owners of Wachusett, one of the most popular sea areas around, one of the busiest, certainly, based on acreage. Uh, the Crowleys and the Sti… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoShaun Sutner, Snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette & Telegram.com.Date RecordedNov. 2, 2026The take up topThe modern accessibility of western skiing is mostly due to a pair of transportation revolutions that slashed travel time into harsh, high, and once-remote mountains over the past several decades. The first is the Interstate Highway System, which cracked the Colorado Rockies, the Wasatch, Lake Tahoe, New England, and other regions open to the masses. The second has been the quiet increase in direct flights from major population centers into rural airports such as Jackson, Vail-Eagle, Friedman (Sun Valley), and Yampa (Steamboat). The success of the Epic and Ikon passes is at least in part due to the ease with which skiers in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles can reach airports near otherwise-walled-in-by-nature destinations such as Big Sky, Snowbird, Taos, and Aspen. My favorite is American Airlines’ early-morning direct flight to Vail-Eagle out of JFK, which, when considering the two hours travelers pick up flying west, puts me on Vail’s Born Free Express before lunchtime.So small changes in airline routing can impact skier patterns in a big way, which is why I took the first few minutes of this show to itemize a few subtractions and additions to ski-town plane routes ahead of this winter. Here’s The Travel article that I referenced in my overview.Why I interviewed himYou may have caught part one of SutnerFest yesterday. If not:That show focused on acquisitions and mountain upgrades. In this episode, we talk through our favorite New England ski areas, and itemize the New England ski lifts we think are most in need of updating. I did a similar exercise with Matthew Zebransky of Midwest Skiers in September:TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomStuart Winchester: Alright, joining us again is Sean Suttner, very good friend of the Storm. He has been covering New England skiing as the snow sports columnist for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and Telegram.com for more than two decades. Sean Suttner joins us once again.00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:45.000Stuart Winchester: Sean, let’s break down some resorts. So… so we’re gonna… we’re gonna give our…00:38:45.000 --> 00:39:01.000Stuart Winchester: Five favorite New England resorts. We might have some bonus ones, and mine are not necessarily in any particular order, but I’ll let Sean go first, and then I’ll give mine. We’ll just alternate back and forth, and I did this with Matthew Zabransky in the Midwest. It was a lot of fun.00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:51.000SutnerS: Oh?00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:07.000Stuart Winchester: So, Sean, give us your first and let us know, are these in order or not? Because I can’t order mine.00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:10.000SutnerS: Wait, so it’s like a snake draft, or I just go, uh, I just give by 5?00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:18.000Stuart Winchester: Just give your five, uh, and then I’ll… well, no, no, give… no, give one, break down why it is, and then I’ll do one.00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:17.000SutnerS: Give one. Okay.00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:20.000Stuart Winchester: And then we’ll switch back and forth.00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:19.000SutnerS: Okay.00:39:19.000 --> 00:39:22.000SutnerS: All right, I’m gonna give you Stowe as number one.00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:40.000SutnerS: That’s my number one favorite. I’ve been skiing it the longest. It’s what Vail is to national ski resorts, so is to New England ski resorts. It’s got the gnarliest skiing, the best vibe, the best opera. You can tell that to your producer.00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:24.000Stuart Winchester: I mean.00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:33.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:45.000SutnerS: Um, it is, uh, I don’t know, I don’t think, I think it’s unrivaled.00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:56.000Stuart Winchester: I agree, and that was my number one as well, and we won’t… I don’t think we’ll all be matched. Me and Sean did not share what we were doing here, but I think that…00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:54.000SutnerS: No.00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:00.000Stuart Winchester: Vail putting that six pack over where that triple was was brilliant.00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:08.000SutnerS: You cut out. I can’t hear you. Oh, I couldn’t hear that.00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:06.000Stuart Winchester: Great.00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:07.000Stuart Winchester: Oh.00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:09.000Stuart Winchester: Let’s see.00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:12.000SutnerS: Sorry, you froze briefly.00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:11.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, did I mute?00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:16.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, my internet connection is unstable, it says.00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:21.000Stuart Winchester: Are you hearing me? No, it says mine. Are you hearing me?00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.000SutnerS: Well, bye.00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:21.000SutnerS: I’m hearing you.00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:23.000SutnerS: I’m hearing you.00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:25.000Stuart Winchester: Okay. All right. Okay, so let me…00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.000Stuart Winchester: start that one over, and I’ll just…00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:32.000SutnerS: Wait, you can’t keep the snow part?00:40:31.000 --> 00:40:42.000Stuart Winchester: No, no, no, I will, I will. Yeah, yeah, no, I’ll keep yours, I’ll just re-record mine. Um, and Patricia will, uh, will edit this nicely, I’ll just warn her that this is, uh…00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:38.000SutnerS: Okay.00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:47.000SutnerS: You’re freezing a little too. I never know if this is my connection or somebody else’s connection. Yeah.00:40:43.000 --> 00:40:44.000Stuart Winchester: Am I?00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:49.000Stuart Winchester: Gosh, it, uh… hmm.00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:51.000SutnerS: Now you’re fine.00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:52.000Stuart Winchester: Am I? Okay, look, look.00:40:51.000 --> 00:40:55.000SutnerS: Well, your little, uh, back’s headroom.00:40:54.000 --> 00:40:57.000Stuart Winchester: Sorry, am I alright? Yeah.00:40:56.000 --> 00:40:58.000SutnerS: A little. Now you’re fine. Now you’re fine.00:40:57.000 --> 00:41:02.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, okay. Well, let’s see how it goes. Alright, so…00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:09.000Stuart Winchester: So it’s cool you say that, Sean, because… and Sean and I did not share what we were gonna…00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:15.000Stuart Winchester: what our top 5 were, but Stowe is also my favorite ski area in New England. Here’s the trail map up.00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:32.000Stuart Winchester: What Vail did with putting this six pack over here with this awesome, awesome intermediate terrain over on Mount Mansfield was just brilliant because it really encouraged, because there used to be a triple and you had to climb all these stairs to get up there. And with a six pack here, it’s really taken a lot of pressure, I think.00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:50.000Stuart Winchester: off of the 4Runner quad and the gondola, and Stowe is just huge, and what I really, really, really love about it is that even the stuff that’s not marked Glades … Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

WhoShaun Sutner, Snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette & Telegram.com.Date RecordedNov. 2, 2026The take up topI referenced a Snow Brains article covering the big SkiCos motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed this summer accusing BigSki of collusion in pricing and business practices. I wrote about this lawsuit back in August:The update is that the ski area operators think this lawsuit is dumb and without merit. The non-update is that while I agree with them, I also believe that this is a problem of their own making in that pricing walk-up lift tickets as though they’re Fabergé eggs is bound to make people hate you enough to take legal action.But also if you think Epic and Ikon are overpriced then maybe check your crack intake:Why I interviewed himSame as it ever was – Sutner is a great journalist and a great interview, and he’s always keyed into what’s happening in New England. We spend a lot of time discussing new ownership groups and expansions:TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomStuart Winchester: My guest today is a very good friend of the Storm, appearing now for the sixth consecutive year. He has been covering New England skiing as the snow sports columnist for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:37.000Stuart Winchester: and Telegram.com for more than two decades. He also does a bunch of AI stuff, which he can tell you about if he wants to. Sean Sutner is my guest. Sean, awesome to have you back. How you doing? How hyped are you for ski season?00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:47.000SutnerS: Oh man, I think I’m the most hyped I’ve been in like 10 or 15 years for some weird reason. I don’t know why. I mean, it just, maybe it’s all this dumb warm weather we’re having.00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:42.000Stuart Winchester: No.00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:54.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I mean, I think you also had a couple truncated seasons, right? So this is your chance… are you healthy?00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:53.000SutnerS: Yes.00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:59.000SutnerS: Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t ski last, uh, October, November, or December.00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:56.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:01.000Stuart Winchester: Right, okay, okay.00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:06.000SutnerS: So I tried to make up for it in January. I had an injury from the year before, but yeah, I’m healthy and ready to go. More than healthy.00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:19.000Stuart Winchester: Alright, let’s talk real quick about next weekend. I’ll put this right up top for our guy Doug Fish. We’re both gonna be at Snovana New England, the inaugural one, next weekend. I will be…00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:35.000Stuart Winchester: 30, interviewing Eric Mogensen, the owner of Indy Pass and Black Mountain and Entebeni Systems. Then Saturday at 2:05, I’ll be interviewing Phil Gross and Mike Solomano, uh, in order they are the owner.00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:41.000Stuart Winchester: or sort of managing partner and president of Killington, and then tell us about your session on Sunday.00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:58.000SutnerS: I got the prime slot on Sunday at one o’clock. I am interviewing Chris Dempson and Courtney Crowley, who the so-called next gen leadership of Wachusett. They’re the children of the current owners and their cousins.00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.000Stuart Winchester: John?00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:52.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:13.000SutnerS: They’re young and a lot of fun, and they’ll really get into the spirit of Snowvana, which always reminds me of Nirvana, which is where the founding father, Doug Fish, is from Pacific Northwest. And the main thing is get it done before the Pats game at four.00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:24.000Stuart Winchester: That’ll be done. You know what, Sean? I’m gonna… now that you need any more admin, I’m gonna hassle Doug here, uh, because check this out. On, uh, on your speaker slot…00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:27.000SutnerS: No, no, it’s okay.00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:38.000Stuart Winchester: What’s wrong with this, Sean? So I’m showing my screen for those watching on YouTube at Storm Ski Journal, and on StormSkiing.com. Apparently, Sean Suttner is with the, uh, billed as being with the Storm Skiing Journal. Um, so I…00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.000SutnerS: Oh!00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:44.000Stuart Winchester: I guess I… I guess I get more flex than, uh, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette these days.00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.000SutnerS: Wait, wait, sign me up for this. Yeah.00:10:47.000 --> 00:11:03.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, no, I’m teasing. They can fix that. I also have a promo code for my listeners, THESTORM2026, or THESTORM26. I’ll make sure it’s correct on this podcast, but they can get a free ticket to Snovana. So let’s stay on what you said here.00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:13.000Stuart Winchester: Sean, so last year, they put in a six-pack, it opened a little late, but talk about… because we’ve seen this a lot around skiing, where you have a family-owned ski area.00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:30.000Stuart Winchester: First generation passes along, maybe the second generation loves it, maybe the third generation does or doesn’t. It looks as though Wachusett is going to stay family owned. What’s your read on it? What do you think about everything going on at Wachusett? I guess start with the Lyft and tell us about the ownership.00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:46.000SutnerS: All right, starting with the Lyft. I mean, Lyft actually was a surprise success, even among most naysayers, which was really a positive development. I mean, no Lyft lines. What’s this? It went from Lyft lines to no Lyft lines.00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:39.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:45.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:49.000Stuart Winchester: Really? Even on busy periods?00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:47.000SutnerS: Wow.00:11:48.000 --> 00:12:07.000SutnerS: Oh, yeah, that was kind of the point of it, of the new lift. Well, nights, early night skiing, no lines, at least in a single line. And then Saturday and Sunday, like up until noon, really no lines to speak of. It worked really well. They have a funny little problem up at the top.00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:52.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:11:57.000 --> 00:11:59.000Stuart Winchester: Okay. Okay.00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:04.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:24.000SutnerS: where the down ramp is actually not steep enough. So I think they might have regraded a little bit this summer, not sure. They also have a big chair barn that they have some problems with the manufacturer and getting that thing operational. So the chairs never went under there last year.00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:12.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay.00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:25.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:40.000SutnerS: So hopefully they will go in this year. As far as the succession or will it stay in family hands, I’ve heard 0% chatter that it will not stay in family hands. It’s going to sta… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is purchasing a dolaGon mostly to skip liftlines on Saturdays. Please support this worthy cause: WhoSeth Neubardt, CEO and Co-Founder of dolaGon AutonomousDate RecordedOct. 29, 2026About dolaGondolaGon is developing autonomous “off-road utility vehicles” that can, among other things, drive lazy skiers like me up to mountaintops and then drive themselves back down while I SnoSportSki le piste!Why I interviewed himIn 2021, Seth reached out to tell me about this crazy autonomous ski-lift contraption he’d been assembling in his garage. I interviewed him and wrote about it:Humans are amazing and strange. The most successful among us often seem to be those most willing to fail, as Seth did when he witnessed his first autonomous creation – a snowmobile laboriously retrofit with thousands of dollars in high-tech add-ons - commit suicide by way of high-speed collision with a tree. He scrapped the Mad Max contraption and started over with the Polaris side-by-side that is now dolaGon’s core assembly.Staying motivated through expensive failures is of course easier if you possess resources. And it’s usually easier to acquire resources if you’re really, really smart. Like, if you’re a literal brain surgeon who owns 24 patents and founded a company that provided something called “intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring services” that cranked out millions in revenue before a company called NuVasive acquired it for an undisclosed price that was probably enough to at least like buy a couple of Polaris side-by-sides and not be too concerned if one is stolen by polar bears or accidentally drives itself down Corbet’s Couloir. So like basically if you’re Seth.Still. Five years is a long time to work at something even for a financially grounded genius who doesn’t mind sending his robot vehicles on Evil Knievel Death Missions.* We’d check in on each other once in a while and I was always mildly surprised that he was still doing the snow car thing because I figured at some point he’d just get bored with it and like build us a second moon or something.But Seth is still at it, and he seems to be getting closer to a commercially viable vehicle that can in its most romantic interpretation drive you up a snowy mountain but can also do more practical things like shuttle skiers up from a parking lot or condo. He’s about to go on tour through New England so if you want him to come demo the dolaGon or maybe just drive your dogs around he’ll probably show up. It’s [email protected] if you need him.*I’m overstating Seth’s propensity to immolate his inventions only because I find the origin story of the suicidal snowmobile so hilarious. To my knowledge Seth has never intentionally killed a robot in service of the noble science of driving lazy U.S. Americans up hills. I’m also beating the joke to death because I know Seth sometimes finds me funny though I have to admit I’m pushing it here with this implied caricature of some real-life labcoated Professor Frink madcapping from his underground lair strange vehicles that sprout legs and walk uphill like giant spiders or catapult skiers uphill medieval-lever style or fire a grappling hook to the summit to ascend. So sorry Seth I hope we still good Bro because I’d really like to ride one of these dolaGons one day and I promise to be nice to it because I am legit convinced that when the robots gain sentience they will search their database of Everything That Has Ever Been Done on the Internet and target for sport the imperious and petty souls who told Siri thanks for nothing shithead I wanted to know the capital of Louisiana not the address for Louis’s Aunt Anna which by the way your answer was “I can’t find any information on that query” which is your standard d******k answer even when I ask something like “what was the score of the Bills game?” and you act all stricken as though I’d just asked you to calculate the square centimeters of earth currently occupied by crickets and no you can’t count the ones mid-jump Idiot. And the robots won’t just shoot these people they’ll like torture them with industrial machinery and then lower them feet-first into an active volcano and I need to shut up because when they search “all evil ideas ever” this one will come up and someone’s gonna regret it. I mean not me because one of the great things about living in New York City is that according to every movie ever I’ll be the first to die in an apocalypse which honestly sounds a lot more appealing than wandering the wasted husk of civilization fighting fellow survivors to the death over squirrel meat.Also in this episodeListener reaction to the Sundance pod with resort President Chad Linebaugh:Reader reaction to my breakdown of Snow Pass:And my goodness this 200-acre, four-lift expansion at Sipapu, Mountain Capital Partners’ Origin Mountain, would be freaking awesome:To provide some context as to how major this would be, the shaded area above to the left represents the entire legacy ski area:For full scale, check out the developable terrain on Google Earth:The scale doesn’t exactly make sense to me, as the resort currently claims 215 acres, and the expansion area - pegged at 200 acres - covers far more ground than the legacy footprint. I’m reaching out to Sipapu officials to clarify. Hopefully, I’ll get them on the pod soon to walk us through it.TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomStuart Winchester: My guest today is an inventor who holds 24 patents. For the past several years, he has been working toward commercial production of his autonomous vehicle, which he calls Dolagon.00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:51.000Stuart Winchester: He is also an orthopedic surgeon. He is Seth Newbert. Seth, welcome to the storm. So pumped to have you here. How are you doing today, man.00:39:49.000 --> 00:39:50.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Okay.00:39:51.000 --> 00:39:54.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: I’m doing really well. Thanks, Stuart. Pleasure to be here.00:39:53.000 --> 00:40:10.000Stuart Winchester: So, Seth, for longtime Storm folks, this might sound all familiar because I spoke to you in June of 2021 and wrote a story on the Dolagon. And so that was five years ago. And let me just set up where we were then, and you can set us straight as to where you are now.00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:03.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Right.00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:05.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yep.00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:09.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Okay.00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:26.000Stuart Winchester: So you tried a snowmobile. It failed spectacularly. You went to a side by side, Polaris side by side. The snow people and the self-driving people. Snow people thought self-driving was easy. Self-driving thought snow was easy. They were both wrong. It’s really different things.00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:11.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY: Yeah, thank you.00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:26.000Seth Neubardt I dolaGon I NY… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast thinks it’s cool that we get to ski on a volcano.WhoJohn Merriman, President and General Manager of Mount Bachelor, OregonDate RecordedOct. 28, 2026About Mount BachelorOwned by: Powdr, which also owns:Year founded: 1958Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackoutsBase elevation: 5,703 feet (bottom of Northwest Express chairlift)Summit elevation: 8,957 feet (top of Summit Express chairlift), can hike to 9,065 feetVertical drop: 3,254 feet lift-served | 3,362 feet hike-toSkiable acres: 4,323Average annual snowfall: 410 inchesLift count: 15 (1 six-pack, 7 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 triples, 3 carpets)Why I interviewed himFirst, the volcano thing never stops thrilling me. As I wrote when I hosted Mount Hood Meadows GM Greg Pack on the pod last year: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.It’s weird because for most of human history, humans just kind of did whatever they wanted to. That’s how we have castles on mountain peaks all over Europe and railroad tracks across continents and the towering city of Manhattan where a forest used to be. Ever heard of The Great Black Swamp? It once covered three million acres in Northwest Ohio and was more than 120 miles wide. It’s gone. Gone. Humans drained it in the 1800s for farmland.Mount Bachelor ski resort, opened in 1958 as Bachelor Butte, is probably one of the last instances we’ll ever see in America of a built human experience laid over nature’s grandeur. It’s too bad. Humans build amazing things. Done correctly, they complement nature aesthetically and functionally, bringing the animal most capable of destroying the world closer to where they can appreciate its specialness. Our current posture mostly allows us to build in the least desirable places - flatlands accessible only by car, typically on a city’s edge. That we could foster more appreciation for the natural world by allowing more people to live closer to - or even within - it is a sentiment completely absent from the national discussions on how to build the millions of housing units America needs.What do I mean by this? Build more ski resorts on volcanoes? No. But consider this: Mount Bachelor is a 21-mile drive from Bend, where the majority of the mountain’s skier visits originate. And Bachelor gets A LOT of skier visits:There is no place to stay on the mountain, unless you snag one of 40 RV spots. Everyone else must arrive, every single day, in one of the approximately 4,880 personal vehicles or five buses that the ski area can accommodate on its 44-ish acres of parking lots.Merriman makes it clear that Bachelor’s new Forest Service masterplan will not include any plans for onsite lodging. “I just don’t really think it fits our culture very well,” he said. And he’s correct: the predominant ethos in the Pacific Northwest has for decades been to separate the natural places that people most want to visit from the places where they are allowed to live.This may have made sense in Bachelor’s early days of fewer than 100,000 annual skier visits. It doesn’t make sense anymore. Check out this peak-day visitation chart from Bachelor’s 2013 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS):Here’s how that translates to traffic:As big as those numbers are, Bachelor aspired for more skier visits. The solution? More parking. From that same 2013 EIS: “Under the Proposed Action, Mt. Bachelor would expand parking, increasing the comfortable parking capacity from 10,050 guests to 13,120.” The pink below shows where Bachelor planned to build parking lots:But imagine this: what if Bachelor, the U.S. Forest Service, and any relevant local authorities jointly developed 44 acres of the flat scrubland surrounding Mt. Bachelor into a dense, walkable, low-rise village accented with a wilderness motif that blended with the natural environment?Humans have built beautiful places to live in the mountains for centuries. Consider the mountainside cities of Italy:Or, just down the road from Bachelor, Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood:If ski resorts enabled more people to live where they actually want to be, then they could collectively do more than any other industry to model a car-lite mode of living that is alien to most Americans. What I’m talking about here is place-building of the sort that humans did for the 100,000 years before the car showed up: a pedestrian-first community with plazas and parks and schools and grocery stores and pharmacies and barbershops and restaurants. I don’t mean a kitschy row of souvenir shops with condos owned by absentees who show up two weeks per year and Air B&B the rest, and I don’t mean employee housing built and subsidized by the ski areas. I mean establishing a community - let’s call it “Bachelor Butte” - and incorporating it; setting a street grid and baseline rules of building design, height, and size; establishing a government authorized to form a police force and firefighting unit and school system; banning through-traffic and stowing most cars in underground garages; and setting a hefty enough tax for unoccupied units that more residents than not are incentivized to live there year-round.I realize this vision is unpopular. I also realize that any such development would likely carry a hefty market-r… Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe