I often talk about organizational health, and you have heard me talk about alignment.  It is part of the glue that holds everything together positively.  Without alignment, any organization has poor communication, high turnover, and low morale.

What a beautiful stretch of weather we have had in Vermont this past week.  Even had three ski areas offering skiing the first weekend in May; two are the result of snowmaking and the third could stretch the natural snow phenomenon but snowmaking played a role.

In the previous Steep newsletter, I commented on winter weather being split between the East and West, but now the East has a winter and the West, especially California, and Utah, is getting an overload of storms.

The answer for many small mountains to be able to step up and significantly improve their record-keeping.

What is spatial technology and how can it be implemented by ski areas?

I have become more impressed with the founder of Smart Mountain as I have interacted with him. Wetherbee Dorshow, the founder, is a scientist and a professor

MountainOffice is excited to announce a new offering specially tailored to small ski areas.

I will rate the past holiday season a success as it seems that ski areas did well with visits no matter the conditions.

'Tis the Season – Happy Holidays to you all. May the bullwheels spin, the snow fall, and all guests be happy!

Cycles of behavior come and go, and I am of the opinion we as a society are seeing the beginning of a new behavior as it relates to work in the industrial world. The ski area industry is not immune to this change and will have to look at itself very profoundly to figure out how to continue being successful as the change becomes more predominant.

Having represented four different incident management software programs designed for the ski area industry, I thought I’d share with you what I heard from many ski patrols about what makes an excellent program.

In times of labor shortages, doing things “the way we’ve always done them” may not work anymore.

Everyone from international Fortune 500 enterprises to local mom-and-pop shops should be using Digital Transformation to remain competitive and relevant in today’s world.

Part two of our discussion on how the three keys to maintaining our lift infrastructure.

A scary question. Right? But I imagine many front-line lift maintenance managers and directors are asking that question in the back of their minds.

All ski areas, big and small, have an ongoing need to maintain and improve their physical infrastructure. These positions at ski areas are hard to fill, is this a unique situation for just ski areas? No. it is a national problem across most industries.

It is no significant revelation that there is and has been a shortage of lift technicians, mechanical and electrical, for several years. The problem is currently exacerbated due to the North American labor shortage brought on by the pandemic. My opinion is that the pandemic did not cause the overall labor shortage but rather accelerated it.

One of the biggest challenges I see quite frequently is the lack of buy into the strategy of the organization. I seem more conscious of it now, but as I think back to being involved in the management of a ski area this trait was quite common as well there.

Why is it so difficult to create a maintenance culture?

Recently I had the opportunity to ski at two different resorts on back to back days. With my critical eye I often pay attention to small details at a ski area, guess I can’t let go.