Celebrating the Season

National Ski Areas Association & Granite Peak celebrate amazing seasons!

Last week the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) celebrated its 60th season with a convention in one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to – Nashville, TN. After a three-year break from in-person conventions, more than 800 industry leaders descended upon the world’s country music capital for four days packed with education, networking, and celebratory events.

I can tell you the industry was ready to rejoice and reconnect after two very challenging yet rewarding years across the country. In the opening remarks, NSAA President Kelly Pawlak announced that the industry recorded 61.1 million skier visits beating the previous 60 million visitors set over a decade ago in 2010/2011. So it would seem that this nagging pandemic and the refreshing idea of outdoor recreation have launched skiing to new plateaus.

Kelly is a close friend of mine and someone that I owe a great deal of gratitude, as she was my first boss at Mount Snow back from 2000-to 2010. Kelly leads by example with transparency and encouragement, showing us that even our harshest critics can understand that sometimes things just don’t go as we all had planned.

Segway…..

While down in Nashville, you may have heard we had a little fire on the slopes. At the junction of Miracle and Birch into Lower Duskey, we have a building that houses electrical circuits, our ski patrol repeater, and light switches for our night lighting, with a transformer feeding the entire area. Thankfully we have a killer team here, and our crew quickly identified that something was amiss. By the time our staff arrived to investigate, there was already smoke and small flames from the building and transformer.

The Fire Marshall is still investigating the incident, but I can tell you that our team did a great job containing hot spots on the ground as that was our #1 concern.  They concentrated on the ground & hotspots with pressurized tanks while our snowmaking manager fired up the pumps to extinguish the flames with snowmaking hoses.

SAFER Fire arrived and took over by using our snowmaking hoses to extinguish the flames. We will rebuild our electrical building. Believe it or not, just three days after the fire, the grass in the area where the burn occurred is coming back stronger than ever.

Wildfires are no joking matter and sadly have been cropping up in the news more and more. Last year Tahoe was devastated by fire, and the industry is closely monitoring a fire in New Mexico that potentially could impact several resorts.

Back to Nashville

Granite Peak & Lutsen Mountains were present in Nashville, as well as our owners, Charles & Charlotte Skinner. We had great conversations and shared knowledge/stories while getting to know one another even more so than ever.

Over the next few years, thanks to the collaborative nature of our mountains, you’ll enjoy fun things coming out of our two properties. I’m thankful to have a guy like Jim Vick (GM & Marketing Director at Lutsen) as a counterpart to create dynamic opportunities for our guests and the industry. The man has been there for years and knows his stuff. (He’s also very, very knowledgable about music!) We saw an amazing Grateful Dead Tribute – The Grateful Shred while in town –>

Winner Winner – Moonshine Dinner

NSAA awards resorts and industry leaders in sustainability, safety, marketing, and conversion achievements each year. Granite Peak was nominated for Best Use of Video in a marketing campaign along with fellow nominees Trollhaugen, WI & Alta,UT. I have tremendous respect for both. Trollhaugen was a brand we watched closely during my time back east for its incredibly unique storytelling. Who doesn’t love the Troll on Instagram? And I mean ALTA. Do I need to say more? We were honored to win for our Legendary Series.

It takes a team to deliver things like this, and we have a killer agency in Trampoline Design. I’m stoked to continue the Legendary campaign into its next rendition for the 85th season of 2022/2023.

To be on stage with resorts like Breckenridge, Snowbasin, Jay Peak, and many others is something I’ll never forget. It also makes you realize how many people in the industry are doing amazing things. My goal for future NSAA Shows – win a Golden Eagle Sustainability Award.

I love marketing, but I want to challenge myself and our team to do better at keeping our resort clean, decreasing our carbon footprint, and being aggressively sustainable. The supply chain continues to challenge us, but we are committed to making strides. We plan to work on sustainability programs more this summer, and with your help, we can make an impact. 

What have you been up to?  Have ideas?

We’d love to hear what you have been up to since we closed! Maybe you have ideas on sustainability, or your organization or company does something you can share. I’d love to hear them. If you have questions about summer or would like to say hello, use the comment field below.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Stay awesome.

Greg