On November 3, voters in Steamboat Springs, unincorporated Routt County, Craig, Hayden, Oak Creek and Yampa will decide whether to add a half cent sales tax to fund the Yampa Valley Regional Transportation Authority. The Steamboat Pilot's ballot guide puts the haul at about $7.87 million a
On October 8, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center put the Niño 3.4 index at +2.1°C, with parts of the eastern equatorial Pacific running more than 4°C above normal. A week later, on October 15, NOAA released its winter outlook and confirmed what everyone in ski
Last November, a nonprofit in western Maine bought 19.6 acres off Route 27, about a mile north of the Sugarloaf access road. The seller was Weyerhaeuser. The price was $10. In August, the Carrabassett Valley Planning Board gave final approval for 54 workforce housing units on that land. The
Alterra Mountain Company announced more than $350 million in capital investment for the 2026 and 2027 winter season on September 9. A new 10 million gallon snowmaking reservoir and a new lift at Deer Valley. Remote avalanche control systems at Palisades Tahoe and Mammoth. A terrain expansion at Tremblant. A
A hedge fund is fighting for Vail's board. I am launching The Gateway Index to track what matters more: the housing and land in the towns at the base of the lifts.
Colorado renters now need $36.44 an hour to afford a two bedroom apartment while the state minimum sits at $15.36, and the counties driving that gap are Summit, Eagle, and Pitkin, the same three that keep the lifts running.
Private capital is pouring hundreds of millions into ski country real estate. Workforce housing is still an afterthought, and Breckenridge is the exception that proves it.
Last week, a Connecticut ski area made snow to Dolly Parton. That sentence alone tells you something has changed. View this reel on Instagram Mount Southington announced it has acquired a new TechnoAlpin SnowFactory, a machine that manufactures snow regardless of what the thermometer says outside, and marked the occasion
My father and I spent the day today with Erik Mogensen, his fiancée, Ashley Cunningham, at Black Mountain in Jackson, New Hampshire. If you follow independent skiing at all, you know the name. Erik is the CEO of Entabeni Systems, the director of Indy Pass, and now the sole owner
I read a piece this week on Snowbrains about the four states that used to have ski resorts and don’t anymore. Kansas lost Mt. Bleu in 1983. Nebraska lost Devil’s Nest in 1974. Kentucky lost both Lakewood Village and Ski Butler by the mid 1980s. Georgia lost its
For most of the past twenty years, Vail’s playbook was simple. Buy resorts, put them on the Epic Pass, and use the pass’s ever increasing value to get skiers to commit their money before the snow even falls. It worked. It made Vail the largest ski resort operator
The first in a new series, tracking the weather setting up our winter, region by region, all season long. I’ve been skiing for over 45 years, and every one of those seasons started the same way, with me squinting at a NOAA outlook map trying to figure out if