by Stuart Winchester
Everyone’s searching for skiing’s soul. I’m trying to find its brains. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.stormskiing.com?utm_medium=podcast">www.stormskiing.com</a>
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April 22, 2025
Hunter Mountain VP/GM Trent Poole discusses Hunter Mountain's history, recent snowmaking and lift upgrades, liftline management, and the impact of Vail Resorts' Epic Pass in an interview with The Storm Skiing Journal.
April 8, 2025
<p><p>The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></p><p><strong>Who</strong></p><p>Jeff Colburn, General Manager of <a target="_blank" href="https://silvermt.com/">Silver Mountain</a>, Idaho</p><p><strong>Recorded on</strong></p><p>February 12, 2025</p><p><strong>About Silver Mountain</strong></p><p>Click <a target="_blank" href="https://silvermt.com/mountain/trail-map">here</a> for a mountain stats overview</p><p><strong>Owned by: </strong>CMR Lands, which also owns <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ski49n.com/">49 Degrees North</a>, Washington</p><p><strong>Located in: </strong>Kellogg, Idaho</p><p><strong>Year founded: </strong>1968 as Jackass ski area, later known as Silverhorn, operated intermittently in the 1980s before its transformation into Silver in 1990</p><p><strong>Pass affiliations:</strong></p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2-l2DVg7-QwroOi7EqRDrJYJ4ICYLcJbLx-nARJdrA/edit?gid=192229868#gid=192229868">Indy Pass</a> – 2 days, select blackouts</p><p>* Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2-l2DVg7-QwroOi7EqRDrJYJ4ICYLcJbLx-nARJdrA/edit?gid=2096661527#gid=2096661527">Powder Alliance</a> – 3 days, select blackouts</p><p><strong>Closest neighboring ski areas: </strong>Lookout Pass (:26)</p><p><strong>Base elevation: </strong>4,100 feet (lowest chairlift); 2,300 feet (gondola)</p><p><strong>Summit elevation: </strong>6,297 feet</p><p><strong>Vertical drop: </strong>2,200 feet</p><p><strong>Skiable acres: </strong>1,600+</p><p><strong>Average annual snowfall: </strong>340 inches</p><p><strong>Trail count: </strong><a target="_blank" href="https://www.silvermt.com/mountain-info/trail-status">80</a></p><p><strong>Lift count: </strong>7 (1 eight-passenger gondola, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 2 doubles – view Lift Blog’s <a target="_blank" href="https://liftblog.com/silver-mountain-id/">inventory</a> of Silver Mountain’s lift fleet)</p><p><strong>Why I interviewed him</strong></p><p>After moving to Manhattan in 2002, I would often pine for an extinct version of New York City: docks thrust into the Hudson, masted ships, ornate brickwork factories, carriages, open windows, kids loose in the streets, summer evening crowds on stoops and patios. Modern New York, riotous as it is for an American city, felt staid and sterile beside the island’s explosively peopled black-and-white past.</p><p>Over time, I’ve developed a different view: New York City is a triumph of post-industrial reinvention, able to shed and quickly replace obsolete industries with those that would lead the future. And my idealized New York, I came to realize, was itself a snapshot of one lost New York, but not the only lost New York, just my romanticized etching of a city that has been in a constant state of reinvention for 400 years.</p><p>It's through this same lens that we can view Silver Mountain. For more than a century, Kellogg was home to silver mines that employed thousands. When the Bunker Hill Mine closed in 1981, it took the town’s soul with it. The city became a symbol of industrial decline, of an America losing its rough-and-ragged hammer-bang grit.</p><p>And for a while, Kellogg was a denuded and dusty crater pockmarking the glory-green of Idaho’s panhandle. The population collapsed. Suicide rates, Colburn tells us on the podcast, were high.</p><p>But within a decade, town officials peered toward the skeleton of Jackass ski area, with its intact centerpole Riblet double, and said, “maybe that’s the thing.” With help from Von Roll, they erected three chairlifts on the mountain and taxed themselves $2 million to string a three-mile-long gondola from town to mountain, opening the ski area to the masses by bypassing the serpentine seven-mile-long access road. (Gosh, can you think of <a target="_blank" href="https://gondolaworks.com/">anyplace else</a> where such a contraption would work?)</p><p>Silver rose above while the Environmental Protection Agency got to work below, cleaning up what had been designated a massive Superfund site. Today, Kellogg, led by Silver, is a functional, modern place, a post-industrial success story demonstrating how recreation can anchor an economy and a community. </p><p>The service sector lacks the fiery valor of industry. Bouncing through snow, gifted from above, for fun, does not resonate with America’s self-image like the gutsy miner pulling metal from the earth to feed his family. Town founder/mining legend Noah Kellogg and his jackass companion remain heroic local figures. But across rural America, ski areas have stepped quietly into the vacuum left by vacated factories and mines, where they become a source of community identity and a stabilizing agent where no other industry makes sense.</p><p><strong>What we talked about</strong></p><p>Ski Idaho; what it will take to transform Idaho into a ski destination; the importance of Grand Targhee to Idaho; old-time PNW skiing; Schweitzer as bellwether for Idaho ski area development; Kellogg, Idaho’s mining history, Superfund cleanup, and renaissance as a resort town; Jackass ski area and its rebirth as Silver Mountain; the easiest big mountain access in America; taking a gondola to the ski area; the Jackass Snack Shack; an affordable mountain town?; Silver’s destination potential; 49 Degrees North; these obscenely, stupidly low lift ticket prices:</p><p>Potential lift upgrades, including Chair 4; snowmaking potential; baselodge expansion; Indy Pass; and the Powder Alliance.</p><p><strong>What I got wrong</strong></p><p>I mentioned that Telluride’s Mountain Village Gondola replacement would cost $50 million. The actual estimates appear to be <a target="_blank" href="https://www.telluridenews.com/news/article_0f28f2ca-d846-11ef-b17e-2325e21ba586.html">$60 million</a>. The two stages of that gondola total 10,145 feet, more than a mile shorter than Silver’s astonishing 16,350 feet (3.1 miles).</p><p><strong>Why now was a good time for this interview</strong></p><p>In the ‘90s, before the advent of the commercial internet, I learned about skiing from magazines. They mostly wrote about the American West and their fabulous, over-hill-and-dale ski complexes: Vail and Sun Valley and Telluride and the like. But these publications also exposed the backwaters where you could mainline pow and avoid liftlines, and do it all for less than the price of a bologna sandwich. It was in Skiing’s October 1994 Favorite Resorts issue that I learned about this little slice of magnificence:</p><p>Snow, snow, snow, steep, steep, steep, cheap, cheap, cheap, and a feeling you’ve gone back to a special time and place when life, and skiing, was uncomplicated – those are the things that make <strong>[NAME REDACTED]</strong> one of our favorite resorts. It’s the ultimate pure skiing experience. This was another surprise choice, even to those who named <strong>[REDACTED]</strong> to their lists. We knew people liked <strong>[REDACTED]</strong>, but we weren’t prepared for how many, or how create their affections were. This is the one area that broke the “Great Skiing + Great Base Area + Amenities = Favorite Resort” equation. <strong>[REDACTED]</strong> has minimal base development, no shopping, no nightlife, no fancy hotels or eateries, and yet here it is on our list, a tribute to the fact that in the end, really great skiing matters more than any other single resort feature.</p><p>OK, well this sounds amazing. Tell me more…</p><p>…<strong>[REDACTED]</strong> has one of the cheapest lift tickets around.</p><p>…One of those rare places that hasn’t been packaged, streamlined, suburbanized. There’s also that delicious atmosphere of absolute remoteness from the everyday world.</p><p>…The ski area for traditionalists, ascetics, and cheapskates. The lifts are slow and creaky, the accommodations are spartan, but the lift tickets are the best deal in skiing.</p><p>This super-secret, cheaper-than-Tic-Tacs, Humble Bro ski center tucked hidden from any sign of civilization, the Great Skiing Bomb Shelter of 1994, is…</p><p>Alta.</p><p>Yes, that Alta.</p><p>The Alta with four high-speed lifts.</p><p>The Alta with $199 peak-day walk-up lift tickets.</p><p>The Alta that headlines the Ikon Pass and Mountain Collective.</p><p>The Alta with an address at the top of America’s most over-burdened access road.</p><p>Alta is my favorite ski area. There is nothing else like it anywhere (well, except directly next door). And a lot remains unchanged since 1994: there still isn’t much to do other than ski, the lodges are still “spartan,” it is still “steep” and “deep.” But Alta blew past “cheap” a long time ago, and it feels about as embedded in the wilderness as an exit ramp Chuck E. Cheese. Sure, the viewshed is mostly intact, but accessing the ski area requires a slow-motion up-canyon tiptoe that better resembles a civilization-level evacuation than anything we would label “remote.” Alta is still Narnia, but the Alta described above no longer exists.</p><p>Well, no s**t? Aren’t we talking about Idaho here? Yes, but no one else is. And that’s what I’m getting at: the Alta of 2025, the place where everything is cheap and fluffy and empty, is Idaho. Hide behind your dumb potato jokes all you want, but you can’t argue with this lineup:</p><p>“Ummm, Grand Targhee is in Wyoming, D*****s.”</p><p>Thank you, Geography Bro, but the only way to access GT is through Idaho, and the mountain has been a member of Ski Idaho for centuries because of it.</p><p>Also: Lost Trail and Lookout Pass both straddle the Montana-Idaho border.</p><p>Anyway, check that roster, those annual snowfall totals. Then look at how difficult these ski areas are to access. The answer, mostly, is “Not Very.” You couldn’t make Silver Mountain easier to get to unless you moved it to JFK airport: exit the interstate, drive seven feet, park, board the gondola.</p><p>Finally, let’s compare that group of 15 Idaho ski areas to the <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2-l2DVg7-QwroOi7EqRDrJYJ4ICYLcJbLx-nARJdrA/edit?gid=1234341448#gid=1234341448">15 public, aerial-lift-served ski areas</a> in Utah. Even when you include Targhee and all of Lost Trail and Lookout, Utah offers 32 percent more skiable terrain than Idaho:</p><p>But Utah tallies three times more annual skier visits than Idaho:</p><p>No, Silver Mountain is not Alta, and Brundage is not Snowbird. But Silver and Brundage don’t get skied out in under 45 seconds on a powder day. And other than faster lifts and more skiers, there’s not much separating the average Utah ski resort from the average Idaho ski resort.</p><p>That won’t be true forever. People are dumb in the moment, but smart in slow-motion. We are already seeing meaningful numbers of East Coast ski families reorient their ski trips east, across the Atlantic (one New York-based reader explained to me today how they flew their family to Norway for skiing over President’s weekend because it was cheaper than Vermont). Soon enough, Planet California and everyone else is going to tire of the expense and chaos of Colorado and Utah, and they’ll Insta-sleuth their way to this powdery Extra-Rockies that everyone forgot about. No reason to wait for all that.</p><p><strong>Why you should ski Silver Mountain</strong></p><p>I have little to add outside of what I wrote above: go to Silver because it’s big and cheap and awesome. So I’ll add this pinpoint description from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.skibum.net/rocky-mountains/idaho-ski-areas/">Skibum.net</a>:</p><p>It’s hard to find something negative about Silver Mountain; the only real drawback is that you probably live nowhere near it. On the other hand, if you live within striking distance, you already know that this is easily the best kept ski secret in Idaho and possibly the entire western hemisphere. If not, you just have to convince the family somehow that Kellogg Idaho — not Vail, not Tahoe, not Cottonwood Canyon — is the place you ought to head for your next ski trip. Try it, and you’ll see why it’s such a well-kept secret. All-around fantastic skiing, terrific powder, virtually no liftlines, reasonable pricing. Layout is kind of quirky; almost like an upside-down mountain due to gondola ride to lodge…interesting place. Emphasis on expert skiing but all abilities have plenty of terrain. Experts will find a ton of glades … One of the country’s great underrated ski areas.</p><p>Some of you will just never bother traveling for a mountain that lacks high-speed lifts. I understand, but I think that’s a mistake. Slow lifts don’t matter when there are no liftlines. And as Skiing wrote about Alta in 1994, “Really great skiing matters more than any other single resort feature.”</p><p><strong>Podcast Notes</strong></p><p><strong>On Schweitzer’s transformation</strong></p><p>If we were to fast-forward 30 years, I think we would find that most large Idaho ski areas will have undergone a renaissance of the sort that Schweitzer, Idaho did over the previous 30 years. Check the place out in 1988, a big but backwoods ski area covered in double chairs:</p><p>Compare that to Schweitzer today: four high-speed quads, a sixer, and two triples that are only fixed-grip because the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.stormskiing.com/p/podcast-151-schweitzer-mountain-president#details">GM doesn’t like exposed</a> high-elevation detaches.</p><p><strong>On Silver’s legacy ski areas</strong></p><p>Silver was originally known as Jackass, then Silverhorn. That original chairlift, installed in 1967, stands today as Chair 4:</p><p><strong>On the Jackass Snack Shack</strong></p><p>This mid-mountain building, just off Chair 4, is actually a portable structure moved north from Tamarack:</p><p><strong>On 49 Degrees North</strong></p><p>CMR Lands also owns 49 Degrees North, an outstanding ski area two-and-a-half hours west and roughly equidistant from Spokane as Silver is (though in opposite directions). In 2021, the mountain demolished a top-to-bottom, 1972 SLI double for a brand-new, 1,851-vertical-foot high-speed quad, from which you can access most of the resort’s 2,325 acres.</p><p><p>The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.</p></p><p></p> <br/><br/>Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at <a href="https://www.stormskiing.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">www.stormskiing.com/subscribe</a>
April 7, 2025
<p><p>The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></p><p><strong>Who</strong></p><p>Tyler Fairbank, General Manager of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jiminypeak.com/">Jiminy Peak</a>, Massachusetts and CEO of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fairbankgrp.com/">Fairbank Group</a></p><p><strong>Recorded on</strong></p><p>February 10, 2025 and March 7, 2025</p><p><strong>About Fairbank Group</strong></p><p>From <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fairbankgrp.com/about-us">their website</a>:</p><p>The Fairbank Group is driven to build things to last – not only our businesses but the relationships and partnerships that stand behind them. Since 2008, we have been expanding our eclectic portfolio of businesses. This portfolio includes three resorts—Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, Cranmore Mountain Resort, and Bromley Mountain Ski Resort—and real estate development at all three resorts, in addition to a renewable energy development company, EOS Ventures, and a technology company, Snowgun Technology.</p><p><strong>About Jiminy Peak</strong></p><p>Click <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jiminypeak.com/the-mountain/mountain-information/know-before-you-go/">here</a> for a mountain stats overview</p><p><strong>Owned by: </strong>Fairbank Group, which also owns Cranmore and operates Bromley (see breakdowns below)</p><p><strong>Located in: </strong>Hancock, Massachusetts</p><p><strong>Year founded: </strong>1948</p><p><strong>Pass affiliations:</strong></p><p>* Ikon Pass: 2 days, with blackouts</p><p>* Uphill New England</p><p><strong>Closest neighboring ski areas: </strong>Bousquet (:27), Catamount (:49), Butternut (:51), Otis Ridge (:54), Berkshire East (:58), Willard (1:02)</p><p><strong>Base elevation: </strong>1,230 feet</p><p><strong>Summit elevation: </strong>2,380 feet</p><p><strong>Vertical drop: </strong>1,150 feet</p><p><strong>Skiable acres: </strong>167.4</p><p><strong>Average annual snowfall: </strong>100 inches</p><p><strong>Trail count: </strong>42</p><p><strong>Lift count: </strong>9 (1 six-pack, 2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s <a target="_blank" href="https://liftblog.com/jiminy-peak-ma/">inventory</a> of Jiminy Peak’s lift fleet)</p><p><strong>About Cranmore</strong></p><p>Click <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cranmore.com/The-Mountain/Resort-Information/First-Timers-Guide">here</a> for a mountain stats overview</p><p><strong>Owned by:</strong> The Fairbank Group</p><p><strong>Located in: </strong>North Conway, New Hampshire</p><p><strong>Year founded: </strong>1937</p><p><strong>Pass affiliations: </strong></p><p>* Ikon Pass: 2 days, with blackouts</p><p>* Uphill New England</p><p><strong>Closest neighboring ski areas: </strong>Attitash (:16), Black Mountain (:18), King Pine (:28), Wildcat (:28), Pleasant Mountain (:33), Bretton Woods (:42)</p><p><strong>Base elevation:</strong> 800 feet</p><p><strong>Summit elevation:</strong> 2,000 feet</p><p><strong>Vertical drop:</strong> 1,200 feet</p><p><strong>Skiable Acres:</strong> 170 </p><p><strong>Average annual snowfall: </strong>80 inches</p><p><strong>Trail count:</strong> 56 (15 most difficult, 25 intermediate, 16 easier)</p><p><strong>Lift count:</strong> 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s <a target="_blank" href="https://liftblog.com/cranmore-nh/">inventory</a> of Cranmore’s lift fleet)</p><p><strong>About Bromley</strong></p><p>Click <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bromley.com/the-mountain/about-bromley/">here</a> for a mountain stats overview</p><p><strong>Owned by:</strong> The estate of Joseph O'Donnell</p><p><strong>Operated by: </strong><a target="_blank" href="https://www.fairbankgrp.com/">The Fairbank Group</a></p><p><strong>Pass affiliations: </strong>Uphill New England</p><p><strong>Located in: </strong>Peru, Vermont</p><p><strong>Closest neighboring ski areas: </strong>Magic Mountain (14 minutes), Stratton (19 minutes)</p><p><strong>Base elevation:</strong> 1,950 feet</p><p><strong>Summit elevation:</strong> 3,284 feet</p><p><strong>Vertical drop:</strong> 1,334 feet</p><p><strong>Skiable Acres:</strong> 300</p><p><strong>Average annual snowfall: </strong>145 inches</p><p><strong>Trail count:</strong> 47 (31% black, 37% intermediate, 32% beginner)</p><p><strong>Lift count:</strong> 9 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 4 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog’s of <a target="_blank" href="https://liftblog.com/bromley-vt/">inventory</a> of Bromley’s lift fleet)</p><p><strong>Why I interviewed him</strong></p><p>I don’t particularly enjoy riding six-passenger chairlifts. Too many people, up to five of whom are not me. Lacking a competent queue-management squad, chairs rise in loads of twos and threes above swarming lift mazes. If you’re skiing the West, lowering the bar is practically an act of war. It’s all so tedious. Given the option – Hunter, Winter Park, Camelback – I’ll hop the parallel two-seater just to avoid the drama.</p><p>I don’t like six-packs, but I sure am impressed by them. Sixers are the chairlift equivalent of a two-story Escalade, or a house with its own private Taco Bell, or a 14-lane expressway. Like damn there’s some cash floating around this joint.</p><p>Sixers are common these days: America is home to <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2-l2DVg7-QwroOi7EqRDrJYJ4ICYLcJbLx-nARJdrA/edit?gid=364075889#gid=364075889">107 of them</a>. But that wasn’t always so. Thirty-two of these lifts came online in just the past three years. Boyne Mountain, Michigan built the first American six-pack in 1992, and for three years, it was the only such lift in the nation (and don’t think they didn’t spend every second reminding us of it). The next sixer rose at Stratton, in 1995, but 18 of the next 19 were built in the West. In 2000, Jiminy Peak demolished a Riblet double and dropped the Berkshire Express in its place.</p><p>For 26 years, Jiminy Peak has owned the only sixer in the State of Massachusetts (Wachusett will build the second this summer). Even as they multiply, the six-pack remains a potent small-mountain status symbol: Vail owns 31 or them, Alterra 30. Only 10 independents spin one. Sixers are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, difficult to manage. To build such a machine is to declare: we are different, we can handle this, this belongs here and so does your money.</p><p>Sixty years ago, Jiminy Peak was a rump among a hundred poking out of the Berkshires. It would have been impossible to tell, in 1965, which among these many would succeed. Plenty of good ski areas failed since. Jiminy is among the last mountains standing, a survival-of-the-fittest tale punctuated, at the turn of the century, by the erecting of a super lift that was impossible to look away from. That neighboring <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newenglandskihistory.com/Massachusetts/brodie.php">Brodie</a>, taller and equal-ish in size to Jiminy, shuttered permanently two years later, after a 62-year run as a New England staple, was probably not a coincidence (yes, I’m aware that the Fairbanks themselves bought and closed Brodie). Jiminy had planted its 2,800-skier-per-hour flag on the block, and everyone noticed and no one could compete.</p><p>The Berkshire Express is not the only reason Jiminy Peak thrives in a 21st century New England ski scene defined by big companies, big passes, and big crowds. But it’s the best single emblem of a keep-moving philosophy that, over many decades, transformed a rust-bucket ski area into a glimmering ski resort. That meant snowmaking before snowmaking was cool, building places to stay on the mountain in a region of day-drivers, propping a wind turbine on the ridge to offset dependence on the energy grid.</p><p>Non-ski media are determined to describe America’s lift-served skiing evolution in terms of climate change, pointing to the shrinking number of ski areas since the era when any farmer with a backyard haystack and a spare tractor engine could run skiers uphill for a nickel. But this is a lazy narrative (America <a target="_blank" href="https://www.stormskiing.com/p/the-western-us-has-added-54598-acres">offers</a> a lot more skiing now than it did 30 years ago). Most American ski areas – perhaps none – have failed explicitly because of climate change. At least not yet. Most failed because running a ski area is hard and most people are bad at it. Jiminy, once surrounded by competitors, now stands alone. Why? That’s what the world needs to understand.</p><p><strong>What we talked about</strong></p><p>The impact of Cranmore’s new Fairbank Lodge; analyzing Jiminy’s village-building past to consider Cranmore’s future; Bromley post-Joe O’Donnell (RIP); Joe’s legacy – “just an incredible person, great guy”; taking the long view; growing up at Jiminy Peak in the wild 1970s; Brian Fairbank’s legacy building Jiminy Peak – with him, “anything is possible”; how Tyler ended up leading the company when he at one time had “no intention of coming back into the ski business”; growing Fairbank Group around Jiminy; surviving and recovering from a stroke – “I had this thing growing in me my entire life that I didn’t realize”; carrying on the family legacy; why Jiminy and Cranmore joined the Ikon Pass as two-day partners, and whether either mountain could join as full partners; why Bromley didn’t join Ikon; the importance of New York City to Jiminy Peak and Boston to Cranmore; why the ski areas won’t be direct-to-lift with Ikon right away; are the Fairbank resorts for sale?; would Fairbank buy more?; the competitive advantage of on-mountain lodging; potential Jiminy lift upgrades; why the Berkshire Express sixer doesn’t need an upgrade of the sort that Cranmore and Bromley’s high-speed quads received; why Jiminy runs a fixed-grip triple parallel to its high-speed six; where the mountain’s next high-speed lift could run; and Jiminy Peak expansion potential.</p><p><strong>What I got wrong</strong></p><p>* I said that I didn’t know which year Jiminy Peak installed their wind turbine – it was 2007. Berkshire East built its machine in 2010 and activated it in 2011.</p><p>* When we recorded the Ikon addendum, <a target="_blank" href="https://cranmore.com/season-passes">Cranmore</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jiminypeak.com/skiing-riding/tickets-passes/jiminy-peak-becomes-ikon-pass-bonus-mountain/">Jiminy Peak</a> had not yet offered any sort of Ikon Pass discount to their passholders, but Tyler promised details were coming. Passholders can now find offers for a discounted ($229) three-day Ikon Session pass on either ski area’s website.</p><p><strong>Why now was a good time for this interview</strong></p><p>For all the Fairbanks’ vision in growing Jiminy from tumbleweed into redwood, sprinting ahead on snowmaking and chairlifts and energy, the company has been slow to acknowledge the largest shift in the consumer-to-resort pipeline this century: the shift to multi-mountain passes. Even their own three mountains share just one day each for sister resort passholders.</p><p>That’s not the same thing as saying they’ve been wrong to sit and wait. But it’s interesting. Why has this company that’s been so far ahead for so long been so reluctant to take part in what looks to be a permanent re-ordering of the industry? And why have they continued to succeed in spite of this no-thanks posture?</p><p>Or so my thinking went when Tyler and I scheduled this podcast a couple of months ago. Then Jiminy, along with sister resort Cranmore, joined the Ikon Pass. Yes, just as a two-day partner in what Alterra is labeling a “bonus” tier, and only on the full Ikon Pass, and with blackout dates. But let’s be clear about this: Jiminy Peak and Cranmore <a target="_blank" href="https://www.stormskiing.com/p/why-did-ikon-pass-add-2-days-at-jiminy">joined the Ikon Pass</a>.</p><p>Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), for me and my Pangea-paced editing process, we’d recorded the bulk of this conversation several weeks before the Ikon announcement. So we recorded a post-Ikon addendum, which explains the mid-podcast wardrobe change.</p><p>It will be fascinating to observe, over the next decade, how the remaining holdouts manage themselves in the Epkon-atronic world that is not going away. Will big indies such as Jackson Hole and Alta eventually eject the pass masses as a sort of high-class differentiator? Will large regional standouts like Whitefish and Bretton Woods and Baker and Wolf Creek continue to stand alone in a churning sea of joiners? Or will some economic cataclysm force a re-ordering of the companies piloting these warships, splintering them into woodchips and resetting us back to some version of 1995, where just about every ski area was its own ski area doing battle against every other ski area?</p><p>I have guesses, but no answers, and no power to do anything, really, other than to watch and ask questions of the Jiminy Peaks of the world as they decide where they fit, and how, and when, into this bizarre and rapidly changing lift-served skiing world that we’re all gliding through.</p><p><strong>Why you should ski Jiminy Peak</strong></p><p>There are several versions of each ski area. The trailmap version, cartoonish and exaggerated, designed to be evocative as well as practical, a guide to reality that must bend it to help us understand it. There’s the Google Maps version, which straightens out the trailmap but ditches the order and context – it is often difficult to tell, from satellite view, which end of the hill is the top or the bottom, where the lifts run, whether you can walk to the lifts from the parking lot or need to shuttlebus it. There is the oral version, the one you hear from fellow chairlift riders at other resorts, describing their home mountain or an epic day or a secret trail, a vibe or a custom, the thing that makes the place a thing.</p><p>But the only version of a ski area that matters, in the end, is the lived one. And no amount of research or speculation or YouTube-Insta vibing can equal that. Each mountain is what each mountain is. Determining why they are that way and how that came to be is about 80 percent of why I started this newsletter. And the best mountains, I’ve found, after skiing hundreds of them, are the ones that surprise you.</p><p>On paper, Jiminy Peak does not look that interesting: a broad ridge, flat across, a bunch of parallel lifts and runs, a lot of too-wide-and-straight-down. But this is not how it skis. Break left off the sixer and it’s go-forever, line after line dropping steeply off a ridge. Down there, somewhere, the Widow White’s lift, a doorway to a mini ski area all its own, shooting off, like Supreme at Alta, into a twisting little realm with the long flat runout. Go right off the six-pack and skiers find something else, a ski area from a different time, a trunk trail wrapping gently above a maze of twisting, tangled snow-streets, dozens of potential routes unfolding, gentle but interesting, long enough to inspire a sense of quest and journey.</p><p>This is not the mountain for everyone. I wish Jiminy had more glades, that they would spin more lifts more often as an alternative to Six-Pack City. But we have Berkshire East for cowboy skiing. Jiminy, an Albany backyarder that considers itself worthy of a $1,051 adult season pass, is aiming for something more buffed and burnished than a typical high-volume city bump. Jiminy doesn’t want to be Mountain Creek, NYC’s hedonistic free-for-all, or Wachusett, Boston’s high-volume, low-cost burner. It’s aiming for a little more resort, a little more country club, a little more it-costs-what-it-costs sorry-not-sorry attitude (with a side of swarming kids).</p><p><strong>Podcast Notes</strong></p><p><strong>On other Fairbank Group podcasts</strong></p><p><strong>On Joe O’Donnell</strong></p><p>A 2005 Harvard Business School <a target="_blank" href="https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=2010">profile</a> of O’Donnell, who passed away on Jan. 7, 2024 at age 79, gives a nice overview of his character and career:</p><p>When Joe O'Donnell talks, people listen. Last spring, one magazine ranked him the most powerful person in Boston-head of a privately held, billion-dollar company he built practically from scratch; friend and advisor to politicians of both parties, from Boston's Democratic Mayor Tom Menino to the Bay State's Republican Governor Mitt Romney (MBA '74); member of Harvard's Board of Overseers; and benefactor to many good causes. Not bad for a "cop's kid" who grew up nearby in the blue-collar city of Everett.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=2010">Read the rest…</a></p><p><strong>On Joe O’Donnell “probably owning more ski areas than anyone alive”</strong></p><p>I wasn’t aware of the extent of Joe O’Donnell’s deep legacy of ski area ownership, but New England Ski History <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newenglandskihistory.com/biographies/odonnelljoseph.php">documents</a> his stints as at least part owner of Magic Mountain VT, Timber Ridge (now defunct, next-door to and still skiable from Magic), Jiminy, Mt. Tom (defunct), and Brodie (also lost). He also served Sugar Mountain, North Carolina as a vendor for years.</p><p><strong>On stroke survival</strong></p><p>Know how to BE FAST by spending five second staring at this:</p><p>More, from the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cdc.gov/stroke/about/index.html#:~:text=A%20stroke%2C%20sometimes%20called%20a,term%20disability%2C%20or%20even%20death">CDC</a>.</p><p><strong>On Jiminy joining the Ikon Pass</strong></p><p>I covered this extensively here:</p><p><p>The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.</p></p> <br/><br/>Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at <a href="https://www.stormskiing.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">www.stormskiing.com/subscribe</a>
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