New Owners Close on Burke, Will “Nearly Triple” Snowmaking Capacity Immediately

And five more reasons to be happy this is all done

Burke has new owners. They are who we thought they would be: Burke Academy, the local Graham family, the owners of Berkshire East. Together they are the supergroup known as “Bear Den Partners.”

Moving on.

Burke has many things that many other ski areas wish they had: a 2,000-foot vertical drop, two high-speed quads built in this century, ties to an internationally respected skiing institution, and an astonishingly perfect 600-vertical-foot beginner area that may be the best of its kind in North America.

But they are missing the only thing that matters for a New England ski area. Even a New England ski area that averages 217 inches of snowfall per winter: overwhelming, ostentatious, ridiculous snowmaking. Snowmaking that makes you say “Gosh, really?” Snowmaking that feels stupid when you look at it. Snowmaking that has a giraffe saying “Fellas I’m having trouble breathing here.” Snowmaking that’s so spectacularly over the top that if skiing were outlawed but the snowguns remained in place, Burke could sell itself to Christmas tourists who would pay $12 apiece to marvel at the Spectacular Snowmaking Spectacle of the NEK. Snowmaking that makes your non-skiing relatives say “oh my goodness you’re still skiing in March?” Snowmaking that when they have to rebuild the system in 50 years they start excavating with their backhoes and say “what the fuck was wrong with these lunatics? There’s a fully intact giraffe skeleton down here,” along with 1,500 miles of pipe. The kind of snowmaking where they post pictures of a gigantic pile of snow on Labor Day and label it a “system test.” The kind of snowmaking that little kids picture when you say “snowmaking,” and they imagine God up there just stomping the shit out of some clouds. The kind of snowmaking that creates its own permanent microclimate, reversing the poles and shoving Earth into a 10,000-year ice age that will spark humanity’s permanent evacuation to Mars.

And to get that kind of snowmaking, Burke needs owners who say things like this in press releases: “Our first focus in the capital improvement plan is to nearly triple our snowmaking capacity in time for the 2025/2026 ski season.”

Credit for that declaration goes to Mr. Ken Graham of Bear Den Partners. How will he do it? I don’t know. He’ll probably say “Jon Schaefer go do this,” and Jon Schaefer will go do it, in the same way he did it at Catamount and Bousquet. He will do it with pipes and pumps and an inconceivable volume of water. He will do it by digging holes in the ground and putting things there. He will do it with snowguns trucked in from distant factories. His summer will suck because of it, but your winter will be better. At least if you ski at Burke. Which you should. Especially now.

Burke’s snowmaking will triple. Triple. That is the headline here, and we could end here and check back in December, because nothing else really matters. But since the official we-bought-this press conference isn’t until tomorrow, here are five bonus reasons why skiers ought to be grateful for Burke’s sale:

1) The ski area stayed open

I don’t know why it took court-appointed receiver Michael Goldberg so long to sell this mountain. I don’t know why it only sold for $11.5 million, which is probably what the Mid Burke Express would cost to build brand-new. But I do know this: 2016 was a long time ago, and if Burke would have sat rotting for nine years, we would have had an easier time re-assembling spent Fourth of July fireworks than putting this Humpty Dumpty back together.

2) Black Mountain’s comeback proves there is room for more New England ski areas

It’s tempting to look at New England’s many gigantic ski areas and their many gigantic snowmaking systems, then look at Burke, then look back at everything else, and then say, “Ah, who needs it?” But we just witnessed the rebirth of another New England ski area that seemed entirely extraneous. Why would anyone go to Black Mountain (of New Hampshire)? The lifts are old, the snowmaking is old, and it’s sitting at the top of a hill at the end of a shitty steep road. Attitash, Cranmore, Wildcat, Bretton Woods, and Sunday River are all practically next door, sit on major highways, and have more vertical, better snowmaking, and modern lifts. But Black, under new ownership, just closed on May 3, one of the final four New England ski areas to spin lifts for the 2024-25 winter, and ended the season with at least four times more revenue than the ski area’s previous record season. There are a lot of reasons for this, including making Black Mountain skiing a #Party, but the resurgence of a previously beaten-down mountain in a market that seemed certain it had no room for it suggests that Team Burke can also find their lane.

3) It won’t be called Q-Burke

I want to be careful here, because Mr. Quiros seems like the sort of fellow who could send some guys out to have a little talk with me, but Dude what the fuck were you thinking with this?

4) The bigs won’t buy everything

Vail bought Stowe. Then Okemo and Mount Snow. Then here comes something called Alterra Mountain Company, which showed up with Stratton and then bought Sugarbush. And then Vail bought everything else. Except Shawnee Peak, which Boyne put in its picnic basket. Oh and also Jay Peak, which Utah-based Pacific Group Resorts scooped up. But, hey, Powdr spun off Killington and Pico last summer, and now Burke finds a forever-home with some forever homies. Sure, Burke is now in a family with Berkshire East and Catamount, part of a regional mini-conglomerate, but that will be good for all three. Just watch the skiers ant-line north along I-91 next winter, and witness a regional family born.

5) This is over

When I launched The Storm in 2019, this whole Jay-and-Burke-in-receivership thing was still sorta new. Then Covid hit and I was like “OK I’ll just ignore this Quiros thing and it will go away.” But then it didn’t. And every time I talked about it, I had to explain it. Which gave me a headache. And then Jay sold in 2022, and I was like “the end is near!” But it wasn’t. Burke just sat there like a poop-flavored lollipop. And I was starting to think it would just sit there forever, like a shipwreck on the ocean floor, growing barnacles and accommodating families of lanternfish while the whole world forgot about it and stopped wondering why it ever sunk in the first place.