Browse Our Archives

• Miscellaneous

The Numbers Game--examining mid-season skier numbers of big resort groups; CPSC Urges Helmet Use; Vermont Areas Launch Environmental Website; CSCUSA Gives 20K to Avalanch Programs; Shop Program Aimed at Gear Safety; Quotas for Alberta?; Blue Hills May Get a Break; Ski Areas Join in Vermont [electric rate] Petition; Mont Saint-Sauveur Buys Edelweiss...

This feature piece explores the possibility that the relatively stable insurance market of the past 37 years is about to change. Mergers and acquisitions are possible as large insurance carriers invade the space previously divided up among a handful of longtime ski insurance program managers. ...

• Snowmaking

Slavko Stanchak writes about the ways in which technology has crept into snowmaking operations in this two-part series on mountain ops automation. ...

• Personnel Issues

The latest in ski resort uniforms from outerwear manufacturers with specific uniform programs. ...

This roundup of the latest offerings for the backshop shows consolidated and fine-tuned machines for the 2000-2001 season. ...

• Environment

This is a collection of impressions written by various people involved in NSAA's development of its environmental charter, bringing together ski-industry people, the government and environmental groups, to hammer out voluntary principles that will be signed by North American resorts. We asked these people to comment on the process and speculate as ...

• Marketing

This is a short piece on the NYC Parks and Rec Winter Festival involving Tubbs, BEWI, CCSAA and snowmakers from Killington, Ascutney and Smugglers' Notch. More than 10,000 area residents tried snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and tubing. ...

The author, a tax consultant, explains what expenses can be immediately deducted and which ones have to wait. It all depends on your method of accounting and whether the expenditures are for items with useful benefits that extend over time. ...

• Personnel Issues

This article explores a small trend in offering employees good rates on separate child care at resorts. It's another benefit, as seen by some ski areas, that should attract and hold valuable employees. ...

This is an article that describes the dos and don'ts of public speaking, whether at a conference or at a press conference. It includes tips and practical advice for anyone interested in doing a good job before a group of people. ...

This reprint of a piece from The Pro Rider explains that 40-somethings and their elders looking to learn snowboarding are active and want to learn with gusto. There's no need to baby older clients. The article does have a few important pointers for younger instructors, though. ...

• Marketing

Seth explores Salomon's marketing effects over the last 30 years and how they have acoounted for four revolutions in the ski business. The epitomy of hands-free bindings, the SNS nordic system, the rear-entry boot and the cap ski. ...

• Lift Maintenance

Dale's primer on rigging haul ropes explains the minimum specs required for using gear on haul ropes of different diameters. He also explains the basics of rope rigging and how to rig with safety in mind. ...

• Lift Maintenance

Dale's primer on rigging haul ropes explains the minimum specs required for using gear on haul ropes of different diameters. He also explains the basics of rope rigging and how to rig with safety in mind. ...

Various items, here listed by type of product and/or co: American Lockers; Eurotherm DC Drive; Northeastern Log Homes small unit; Niedner Ltd. lightweight suction hose; Esmart online electricity metering; Cresta Sleds; IndusTool heated rubber floor mat; ColorID card printer ribbon; Traverse Rescue toboggan; TopGun Snowmaking Systems tower gun; SkiT...

Improvements chronicled at: Ascutney Mt., Vt.; Powder Mountain, Utah; Crested Butte, Colo.; Schweitzer Mountain Resort, Idaho; Jack Frost Mountain, Pa.; Nub's Nob, Mich.; and Tremblant, Que. ...

• Miscellaneous

Shawnee Mtn, Pa., used bone-yard materials to build a bullwheel support for its handletow; Steps cut into snowbanks leading from parking lots at Diamond Peak Ski Area, Nev. and a micro switch wired to a lift safety circuit installed across a crack in the foundation of the top terminal at Timberline Four Seasons Resort, W.V. Days before temporary fo...

• Miscellaneous

Seeing Double at Sun Valley [Snowbasin to become Sun Valley, Utah?]; Earl Miller Pursues his [Snowboarding Death] Cover Up; From NSAA to USFS: Pointed Comments [re: draft management plans for forest lands]; Winter X-Games: Triumph or Fiasco? [recations to Mt. Snow event run the gamut]; Club Med in Crested Butte. . .Honest!; Ski Town/Ski Area Financ...

• Miscellaneous

Taking Aim at Insurance is the umbrella headline for three items: a cartoon about poorly placed warning signs; an item about a humourous, yet pointed disclaimer found at skibumnews.com and a photo of Bo Adams posing with a yo-yo in his mouth at a K&K Insurance booth (you have to see the caption). ...

• Safety

The article is an overview of what happened regionally during the NSAA'a Safety Awareness Week of January 15-22. ...

• Marketing

David's take on the term "product" as it has crept into the vocabulary as a synonym for snow. He objects to the usage as another term for the very basis of the ski industry and sees it as potentially damaging. ...

• Business

Vermont Ski Areas Association President Candace Moot says goodbye to the industry she has been involved with for more than two decades. Her observations point to a future that "holds as much promise and as much peril as the past." ...

Jay Peak's President on their policy of opening gladed terrain--in fact all terrain between boundaries--to skiers. It is countered by Rod Kessler of Stowe, and why that mountain does not allow tree skiing. ...

VP of mountain ops at Stowe, Rod Kessler, writes about his resort's decision not to open gladed skiing. It is a counter-point to a Speak-Out by Jay Peak's Bill Stenger outlining that resort's open-mountain policy. ...

• Lifts

The cover is a summit view at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, of the resort's new Le Soleil chair: a Doppelmayr detachable quad. ...