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The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Stuart Winchester
Everyone’s searching for skiing’s soul. I’m trying to find its brains.
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- Yesterday1h 1m
Storm News 11/13/2026: Owner Schmitz on Little Switzerland’s Move to Ikon, 2 New Chairlifts
If you’re headed to Snowvana in Milwaukee this weekend, use code “thestorm26” to snatch a free ticket here.WhoRick Schmitz, Managing Partner of Schmitz Brothers, owners of three Wisconsin ski areas: Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and Crystal RidgeDate RecordedNov. 12, 2026About Schmitz BrothersWhy I interviewed himMy 2022 interview with Schmitz remains one of my favorites. Here was a guy who, at age 22, bought a broken-down Nordic Mountain, Wisconsin, moved into the baselodge, and lived on around $20,000 per year while he stapled the place back together. A few years later, he and his brothers bought the overgrown and abandoned Little Switzerland ski area outside of Milwaukee, rebuilt the busted-ass fleet of antique Riblet doubles, gut-renovated the baselodge, and knitted together a modern snowmaking system. “You don’t hire someone to do something you can do yourself,” Schmitz told me.It was one of many great quotes in a conversation full of them. “The better ski area isn’t always the better business,” Schmitz said to explain why he’d bought, but eventually sold, Blackjack ski area, a snow-blessed mountain in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with nearly double the vert of his current ski areas. (Midwest Family Ski Resorts later purchased Blackjack, along with neighboring Indianhead, and renamed the complex “Snowriver.”) He explained why ropetows were superior to chairlifts for certain parts of the hill, why nothing was more important than snowmaking, and why if anything was more important than snowmaking, it was “location, location, location.”Since Schmitz was obviously a thoughtful guy, I paid attention to everything he did. And his most recent move was a big one - earlier this week, his Wisconsin trio joined the Ikon Pass as two-day partners:It was a big deal for three tiny ski areas that had all nearly failed before Team Schmitz’s arrival, and for a global pass that had just recently acknowledged its bad habit of overlooking both the Midwest and small mountains in general.The Ikon announcement followed Schmitz’s decision, earlier this year, to exit the Indy Pass after seven seasons. It was a blow for a pass that had already lost regional anchors Lutsen, Granite Peak, and Snowriver to Ikon earlier in the year, denting Indy’s once seemingly impregnable Midwest network.Meanwhile, Schmitz has continued to refurbish his mountains, yanking out Little Switzerland’s spectacular-but-aging 1964 up-and-over Riblet double and building two brand-new quads in its place. That’s a $4 million project - a number that ought to make anyone convinced of independent skiing’s inevitable decline reconsider their thesis. Failing businesses, after all, rarely signal that failure with big infrastructure investments.If you’re still not convinced that pockets of Little Ski are doing just fine in the era of Big Ski and its so-called “Duopoly,” go there. Driving up to Little Switzerland last year, I was flabbergasted to think that the bump had ever been abandoned. The lodge rises palatial over a paved parking lot (a rare luxury in skiing). Lifts of all kinds shoot off in all directions. An amazing variety of trails serve racers, beginners, ramp-poppers, and cruisers. As schoolbuses emptied into the baselodge, Schmitz led me on his daily rounds. We skied every trail, rode every lift. Like so many Midwest ski areas, Switz presented small, skied big, and erased all cynicism one could harbor about Industrial Skiing Circa 2026. It doesn’t snow much in Slinger, Wisconsin, and the glaciers barely left a speedbump to slide down when it does. But there Switz goes, bumpity-bump in the winter night, lights a-shimmer, the streaking stick people conducting their kaleidoscopic song that echoes over the parking lots. It’s the sound people make when no other sound will do. The sound of freewheeling motion animate across a crowd. The sound of joy. The sound of skiing. 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 thin
- 2 days ago53 min
Storm News 11/12/2026: More Indy, Why Midwest Skiing Rules, Ski Areas as Art Projects
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
- 2 days ago48 min
Storm News 11/11/2026: Are We In the Golden Age of Skiing? Plus: Snowstar, Ill. to Close
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. s
- 4 days ago57 min
Storm News 11/10/2026: Whistler COO Trembath on Adapting to Permanent Daylight Savings Time
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
- 5 days ago1h 0m
Storm News 11/9/2026: Ikon Adds Mountains, Sipapu GM Bradley on Mega-Expansion
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 fl
- 1 weeks ago1h 19m
Storm News 11/6/2026: ‘Vail Daily’s’ Taylor Explains Vail Resorts’ Proxy Battle
WhoJohn Taylor, principal at John H. Taylor Consulting, reporting for the Vail Daily. Email John at jhtconsulting@comcast.net 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
- 1 weeks ago1h 12m
Storm News 11/5/2026: Financial CEO James Early Analyzes Vail Resorts' Stock
WhoJames Early, CEO of Curia Financial, which will soon be known as Alpine House ResearchDate 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
- 1 weeks ago49 min
Storm Skiing 11/3/2026: Ski Town Flight Changes, Plus Sutner on 5 Fave Ski Areas, Most Urgent Lift Upgrades in New England
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
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About The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast
Everyone’s searching for skiing’s soul. I’m trying to find its brains.
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