Dinner at The Hermitage Club: Mike Reitzell, NSAA, Bill Bennyan, Hermitage Club and Jon Schaefer, Berkshire East.SAM Magazine—West Dover, Vt., Feb. 7, 2025—It's been a pretty good winter in the East so far, with consistently cold temps allowing for terrific snowmaking conditions and retention of whatever natural snow ski areas have gotten. While natural snow hasn’t been blockbuster (except for some resorts in northern Vermont that have eclipsed 200 inches on the season so far) it’s been enough to open natural terrain and keep the skiing—and business—good. Whether it was the decent start to the season or other factors, the crowd of roughly 575 attendees (up from about 520 last year) at Mount Snow, Vt., for the NSAA Eastern Conference, Feb. 4-6, was decidedly upbeat. 

The trade show floor was packed and lively during both sessions, with executives and managers alike mingling with vendors. Educational sessions were well attended and covered a variety of topics, from AI, snowmaking, and leadership to industry data, inclusivity, sustainability, and more.

SAM and HKD also took the opportunity to recognize the winning team of the 2025 I AM a Snowmaker contest, Bolton Valley, Vt., adding to the positive vibes during the show.

Human resources and leadership development topics reigned supreme in the schedule, with sessions focused on navigating difficult conversations, leading through change, psychological and physical safety, mental health, company culture, leadership tools, and an introduction to NSAA’s new online learning platform, PEAKS. These sessions, paired with an HR roundtable, seemed to encourage attendance from a variety of managers and HR professionals alike.

Highlights from the operations sessions included a discussion around smart water management, where ski areas with water constraints were encouraged to invest in collecting data to analyze their operation and reduce run-off. A session on designing terrain parks for inclusivity offered valuable insights on creating parks and programs that welcome riders of all abilities, including building small and medium-sized features into your larger park elements to offer progression. The ADA session, led by NSAA’s Dave Byrd, delved into proactive steps that ski areas can take to improve accessibility at their properties, and the partnerships that help make the process more seamless.

On the artificial intelligence front, sessions were led by Eternity’s Mike Lannen, who also serves as the expert voice on SAM’s Ski Resort AI Bootcamp, and Ascent 360’s Scott Buelter was joined by Tara Gordon of Sugarbush to dive into SMS automation and guest segmentation. Notably, these were the sole marketing-focused sessions during the show.

Having completed the Western and Eastern conferences, the next gathering hosted by NSAA is the National Convention and Trade Show, which will be held in Marco Island, Fla., May 11-14.