Who
Brent Gardner, founder of the Savage Mountain Collective newsletter. Subscribe here:
Date Recorded
Nov. 11, 2026
About Savage Mountain Collective
From Savage Mountain Collective’s “about” page:
Skiing was my job.
Then I blew out my knee, and for twenty-two years it wasn’t anything at all.
I won’t pretend that was a tragedy. I had a life. It was a good one. But there’s a specific kind of quiet that settles in when the thing you organized yourself around becomes a thing you used to do. You stop reading forecasts. You stop knowing what the skis are called. Someone mentions a resort and you nod like you’ve been.
Twenty-two years is a long time to nod.
Then I started skiing again, fully prepared to find out I’d lost it.
I hadn’t lost it. I’d just misplaced it.
That’s what this is.
Beacon and Probe is the SMC ski report: what the Wasatch forecast actually means, when to book, and what’s worth your time. Free.
Savage Mountain Collective is a newsletter and a podcast about building a life around mountains you don’t live in.
Because most of us don’t live in them. We live in Washington and Boston and Philadelphia and Columbus. We have jobs and kids and a mortgage and a three-hour drive to something that generously calls itself vertical. We plan around the mountains. We dream about them. We refresh weather models we know we shouldn’t trust. We start thinking about next winter before this one is over.
That’s the sickness. It’s also the point.
Ski media mostly doesn’t write for us. It writes about people who live in Jackson, ski 120 days, and got their first pair at three. That’s a fine story. It’s just not most people’s story, and it’s definitely not the story of someone trying to find their way back in.
So this is the other conversation.
What you get: gear reviews that tell you what the press release didn’t. Trip logistics from someone who has actually flown east-to-west with skis and family and survived. Honest writing about the East, which is better than the industry admits and which I intend to keep saying until somebody makes me stop. A lot of Utah, because that’s where I go. And every so often, something about what it means to chase a physical thing at an age when the culture would rather you took up golf.
Plus the podcast, where I talk to friends, to people who know this world far better than I do, and to anyone with a good mountain story.
If you’re a weekend skier, a someday skier, or someone who has ever timed a FedEx delivery around a spouse’s work schedule, you’re in the right place.
Pull up a chair.
Brent
Why I interviewed him
We need more ski writing that is entertaining, varied, frequent, and thorough.
We need more ski writing that is daring, interesting, and optimistic.
And we need more ski writing that is reflective, self-aware, and rooted in historical context.
We need more ski writing like what Brent is producing at Savage Mountain Collective. He’s crushing it. If you like The Storm, you’ll like Savage Mountain Collective. Put it in your inbox:
Transcripts
There are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.
Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.
Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.
Zoom
The Take up Top
Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I’m your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Wednesday, November 11th, 2026. It is Veterans Day. Thank you very much to all who served in our country’s armed forces.
02:01:07.000 --> 02:01:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Today on The Storm, an up-and-coming voice in ski media tells us why Salt Lake City is the capital of U.S. skiing, why we’re living in skiing’s golden age, and why Utah should, in fact, build the gondola up.
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Stuart Winchester: Little Cottonwood Canyon.
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Stuart Winchester: First, though, I gotta send up a red alert, and I gotta do this because we…
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Stuart Winchester: Just got news of another ski area closing, and I do not like.
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Stuart Winchester: these stories, because there’s nothing wrong with the ski area, uh, the family is simply moving on from it. So, the ski area in question is an IndyPass partner.
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Stuart Winchester: It is…
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Stuart Winchester: Snow Star, Illinois.
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Stuart Winchester: And Snowstar is a little place. It’s only been opened since 1981. And what that tells you, and there’s a lot of ski areas that opened in, in the, around that time.
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Stuart Winchester: And that’s because that’s when the snowmaking technology really caught up, where it could be in a place like Snowstar, which is not a great snow pocket. Their… their average…
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Stuart Winchester: Inches of snowfall per winter is 39, and I think that’s probably an exaggeration. So it’s a little place, 262 vertical feet, base elevation’s only at 528 feet.
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Stuart Winchester: 28 acres of skiing. And, you know, they’ve got…
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Stuart Winchester: Nice little lift fleet, they got 2 fixed grip quads, they got 2 double chairs, they got 1 carpet, so 5 lifts total.
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Stuart Winchester: And the thing about Snowstar and why this is such a drag.
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Stuart Winchester: to lose a place like this, and why we can’t lose a place like this, is that, as you all know, it is almost impossible to build a new ski area in the United States of America in 2026. So, once these places go.
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Stuart Winchester: They are gone. And this is Snow Star right here, okay?
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Stuart Winchester: And all the other marks on the map.
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Stuart Winchester: Our other ski areas, right? So up here we have Chestnut Mountain in Illinois. Right over here we have Sundown in Iowa. And those are, that’s, they look close, but they’re not, right? So here’s Chicago. Here’s, if you’re looking at the, at the map on storm ski.com or YouTube storm ski journal.
02:03:24.000 --> 02:03:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Essentially, let me describe this for you if you’re not.
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Stuart Winchester: This is the only… Snowstar is the only ski area.
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Stuart Winchester: in what they call.
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Stuart Winchester: Bye.
02:03:36.000 --> 02:03:52.000
Stuart Winchester: So, sorry, it’s the only ski area in this area. I don’t know if this is, if this is Quad Cities or if Quad Cities are up here. So, someone, someone enlightened me, because there was a statement from the Quad Cities division of something in a lot of the news reports I read. So, let’s go to some of those news reports, because.
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Stuart Winchester: I want to…
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Stuart Winchester: share with you what details we have. So, this is reporting from KWQC TV station out there. It says, Snowstar owners to step down. Ski Snow War Hill won’t open this season.
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Stuart Winchester: Snow stars skiing in Snowboard Hills won’t be opening this winter, and I’m reading from the article here. Again, this is, uh…
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Stuart Winchester: KWQC.
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Stuart Winchester: off their website. Officials announced the upcoming closure in a media release Tuesday afternoon.
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Stuart Winchester: This season will also be the last year the Harper family runs the resort.
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Stuart Winchester: Quote, Snowstar has always been about family, ours, and yours, the Harper family said in the release. Quote, stepping back now means we get to put our own family first, the same way so many of you have made Snowstar.
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Stuart Winchester: part of yours, end quote. That’s not a great quote, but they almost never are in press releases, so I’ll give them a pass. The Harper family has been searching for someone to take over and continue operating Snowstar, but officials said they haven’t found the right fit yet.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay, and then read one more from…
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Stuart Winchester: QCBJ, QuadCitiesBusiness.com.
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Stuart Winchester: So, quote from the reading from their website, Snowstars Ski and Snowboard Hills won’t open this winter, and the owners of the 28-acre year-round Andalusia, Illinois recreation area are looking for someone to take it over. That’s where I’ll stop. Red alert, fireworks going up.
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Stuart Winchester: All of you listening, I have so many people listening who…
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Stuart Winchester: Either want to run a ski area.
02:05:30.000 --> 02:05:33.000
Stuart Winchester: I think they could run a ski area.
02:05:33.000 --> 02:05:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Or already run a ski area.
02:05:35.000 --> 02:05:39.000
Stuart Winchester: that could run this ski area, right? It’s…
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Stuart Winchester: Got a built in audience. It’s a populous region.
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Stuart Winchester: It’s the only place to ski. It has good infrastructure. It has four chairlifts. And imagine the snowmaking is quite good. Probably needs some work.
02:05:52.000 --> 02:05:53.000
Stuart Winchester: But…
02:05:53.000 --> 02:06:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Let’s get this done, Storm Nation. Someone, step in. One of you that knows how to run a ski area. And a lot of people listening know how to do that. I don’t.
02:06:04.000 --> 02:06:07.000
Stuart Winchester: But I’m in a position to tell you about this. So.
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Stuart Winchester: Uh, re-reading again from QuadCitiesBusiness.com, Snowstar has been owned by the husband-wife team of Doug and Jennifer Harper for the past several years.
02:06:16.000 --> 02:06:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Couple also owns several other businesses. Snowstar officials announced this week that this will be the last year the Harper family operates Snowstar, as the family turns its focus toward priorities closer to home.
02:06:28.000 --> 02:06:31.000
Stuart Winchester: So look, I hope everything’s right with them.
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Stuart Winchester: Uh, they…
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Stuart Winchester: Intimated that they have been looking for a.
02:06:38.000 --> 02:06:39.000
Stuart Winchester: New owner.
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Stuart Winchester: I… oh, here, here, Kerry Larkin, a manager at one of their other businesses, told the Quad Cities Regional Business Journal, quote, the Harper family has always viewed their time running Snowstar as temporary.
02:06:51.000 --> 02:07:03.000
Stuart Winchester: They are open to someone else taking over operations going forward. No new owner or operator is confirmed at this time. The family has been actively searching for the right fit, but hasn’t found one yet.
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Stuart Winchester: One of you is the right fit. I know it. Let’s get this done. We cannot lose these ski areas. We need to find good long-term owners who understand that.
02:07:14.000 --> 02:07:18.000
Stuart Winchester: If you… if you take away the only ski area.
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Stuart Winchester: from this metropolitan region, which, let’s see what the population is, let’s see.
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Stuart Winchester: Davenport, Iowa.
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Stuart Winchester: Population metro.
02:07:29.000 --> 02:07:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Look this up.
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Stuart Winchester: Right now.
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Stuart Winchester: And see exactly what we are. Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: Oh yeah, so…
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Stuart Winchester: Davenport, Moline, Rock Island. Metropolitan Statistical Area. That is the Quad Cities. All right.
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Stuart Winchester: 380,452 people.
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Stuart Winchester: 380,452.
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Stuart Winchester: If you take this ski area away.
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Stuart Winchester: There is nowhere else to ski.
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Stuart Winchester: There’s nowhere that the kids on their school buses are going to be able to take field trips. There’s nowhere else that the teenagers will be able to drive up to hit the park after school and hang out with their buddies. I mean, the closest ski area is a couple hours north.
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Stuart Winchester: And yeah, you can go up there, and Chestnut is a fabulous ski area and overlooks the Mississippi River. I think it’s one of the more stunning ski areas in America, honestly. Sundown is a great skier, but they are 2 hours away, and that’s a place you’ll go to.
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Stuart Winchester: If you know how to ski.
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Stuart Winchester: But if you live in the Quad Cities, you’re less likely to go there to learn how to ski. You would learn at Snowstar. It’s a good little ski area, it’s an intact ski area, we can’t let this thing gather dust.
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Stuart Winchester: Someone step up.
02:08:45.000 --> 02:08:48.000
Stuart Winchester: And, and.
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Stuart Winchester: figure out a way forward for Snowstar. Rick Schmitz, very smart guy, said one of the most enlightening things to me on this podcast. He said, the better ski area is not always the better business. And he’s had a lot of success running ski areas around Wisconsin.
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Stuart Winchester: And maybe Rick will buy it. Maybe I can talk Rick into it. He’s on the podcast, uh, tomorrow. So…
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Stuart Winchester: Let’s, uh, let’s send up the red alert, let’s send up the flares, let’s get it done, let’s find someone to swoop in and open Snowstar. I have never skied at Snowstar. If you have skied at Snowstar, I would love to hear from you about what that ski area means to you, and what it would mean to the Quad Cities.
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Stuart Winchester: to lose their only ski area.
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Stuart Winchester: Alright, before we get to my guest today, who’s really, uh, really interesting, really interesting guy, set it up his own substack, ski substack, and he’s really crushing it with the frequency and the thoroughness of it, and I wanted to…
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Stuart Winchester: give him a little shine and get to know him a little bit. So, we’ll get to Brent in a moment, but first, I want to tell you about my partner at Island Snowbus. So, if you’re living like I am.
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Stuart Winchester: in Brooklyn, or Queens, or Long Island, and you’re tired of driving all the way up there to ski by yourself.
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Stuart Winchester: Then…
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Stuart Winchester: Let Island Snow Bus do the driving.
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Stuart Winchester: They have pickups throughout Suffolk and Nassau counties, and in eastern Queens near the Whitestone Bridge.
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Stuart Winchester: Island Snowbus plans single and multi-day trips to some of my favorite ski areas in this region, including Whiteface, Jay Peak, Stratton, Gore, Killington, Bel Air, Jiminy Peak, Elk Mountain, Mount Snow, Hunter, and Platykill.
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Stuart Winchester: Might even add some more to that list if a big storm rolls through. Might throw together a pop-up trip.
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Stuart Winchester: Island Snow Bus does offer the option to just pay for the bus, or the bus and the hotels if you’re doing a multi-day trip. If you already have an Epic or Icon Pass, or an Indy Pass, or a Snow Pass, you can deploy that when you get there, and they will give you a discounted rate.
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Stuart Winchester: So, get there, you get there early, you crash out, and you’re refreshed, ready to ski, and if you want to find some ski buddies, you can do that. So, check out Allen Snowbus’ 2026-27 calendar at allensnowbus.com, use code STORM for $50 off.
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Stuart Winchester: your first trip. All right, let’s get to Brent.
The Interview
Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the founder of Savage Mountain Collective, a Substack newsletter that obsessively covers all aspects of skiing.
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Stuart Winchester: Brent Gardner is my guest. Brent, welcome to The Storm. How are you doing today?
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Brent Gardner: Thanks, Stuart. I’m doing great. I’ve got a little countdown clock here on my counter that’s telling me the days before I leave for opening day at Alta, and it’s ticking down a little bit every minute.
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Stuart Winchester: So, I wasn’t aware of the Savage Mountain Collective until a couple weeks ago, and you sent me an email where you gave the storm a shout-out, and I really appreciated that. I started reading through it, and it’s really good, and it’s really…
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Brent Gardner: Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: it actually reminds me of a lot of what the storm was when I first started, and I would do a lot of, sort of, news aggregating and compiling, and, you know, this is what’s new, and uh… I’ve switched to more analysis just because.
00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:12.000
Stuart Winchester: The…
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:23.000
Stuart Winchester: the sort of list-making was exhausting me a little too much. Like, I don’t really keep track of every season pass price anymore like I used to, but, you know.
00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:37.000
Stuart Winchester: what’s interesting to me about the newsletter, besides the content, which I think is great, and I’ll give everyone an opportunity, or give you an opportunity to tell everyone how to subscribe to that, and I’ll include it, a link on the article at accompaniesinstormskiing.com.
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Stuart Winchester: But your journey to this is interesting.
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Stuart Winchester: Uh, and I relate to it because I never had worked in skiing. I didn’t know anybody in skiing when I started this in 2019.
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Stuart Winchester: And I don’t live in a place that is synonymous with skiing, right, and living in New York City. And there’s a lot of parallels there, and there’s some differences. So, I want to go back to your very first post.
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Stuart Winchester: which… well, at least the first one that you published, which talked about…
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Stuart Winchester: your break from skiing, and what it meant to get back to it, and how that led to the newsletter. So, that was a long introduction and kind of rambling, but I want to give you some room to tell your story of your…
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Stuart Winchester: What skiing was to you?
00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:32.000
Stuart Winchester: what the break was, and then how you got back to it and how that led to the newsletter.
00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:50.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, thanks, sir. I mean, look, I was very lucky to be born into a ski family in the ski capital of Allegheny County in western New York. You know, I grew up skiing at a small mountain called Swain. My mom was a skier, my aunts and uncles were skiers, and that was just what we did in the summertime. And from a very young age, you know, if it was wintertime.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:29:50.000 --> 00:30:10.000
Brent Gardner: we were out there skiing. It was icy, it was rocky, and it was an absolutely amazing time. And, you know, I grew up obsessed with it. And, you know, my history on this was I started off skiing so much that it was something that was… I really… I wanted to do it all the time, so I got a little bit into racing, but not all the way. The most important thing was being on the hill.
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:30.000
Brent Gardner: When I got old enough to get a job, I became a ski instructor. When I realized I needed more money than ski instructing paid, I went to work in a ski shop. I think it’s not that dissimilar from people who, you know, you go where you look, you go where you are. Skiing was what I did. And so, all the way up through high school and into early college, I mean, this was where I spent my winters.
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:49.000
Brent Gardner: you know, good news, bad news, I did it so much that I fell in love with it. Bad news is, I got injured, you know, on the last day of a season during Winter Carnival, doing something silly, and um… I didn’t get it checked out. I walked around on it for a year, and I toasted my knee. And so, the next year, I came back, found out I wasn’t the same kind of skier.
00:30:49.000 --> 00:31:09.000
Brent Gardner: that I was, tried it for a little while, and then walked away from the sport for, God, 20 years while I built my career, and then found my way back to it. So, you know, what I found when I came back, though, wasn’t the same sport that I remembered. You know, I was used to waiting for the first edition of Skiing in Powder to show up every year at my house to tell me where I’d dream about going.
00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:31.000
Brent Gardner: And then I’d get my skis ready and head to the mountain. Skiing and powder are very different, if not gone, depending on how you look at it. And the world that I went to look to that I remembered to find out where skiing was at wasn’t there. And so I went looking for it. I found the storm. I found blister. I found a whole bunch of different places where there was an opportunity to learn about kind of where we were, but I had to go on that journey.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. So you, you, you found, uh.
00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:44.000
Stuart Winchester: I don’t know, this term sounds dated now, but the new media, right? So the folks who are taking advantage of these new tools, and I mean…
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Stuart Winchester: Substack, I think, is a godsend to writers, because it made it…
00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:58.000
Stuart Winchester: so that I could build a brand, and build an audience, and monetize that audience, and to the point where this is my full-time job.
00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:09.000
Stuart Winchester: I would not have been able to do that 20 years ago. But like you, and you made a lot of references to the old magazines in your writing, and then just now.
00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:15.000
Stuart Winchester: And I think we grew up around the same era, because you were referring to the 90s. In the 90s, I mean…
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Stuart Winchester: You know, kids, there was no social media. There’s no, like…
00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:30.000
Stuart Winchester: functional internet to speak of. I mean, you could, like, send email, but it was just kind of a pile of garbage. It still is, but, uh, in a different way. Um, so…
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:32.000
Stuart Winchester: What was it about…
00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:46.000
Stuart Winchester: the magazines that resonated with you, because they were kind of the cultural voice of skiing in the 90s. So what was it that you liked, and what were you… what did you go looking for when you got back into skiing that you couldn’t find?
00:32:46.000 --> 00:33:02.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, I mean, you know, the mountains hadn’t really changed. What was on the mountains had. The way that it worked changed. Stuff that I never had to think about before, because you just went to your mountains were there. You know, we would ski throughout western New York, and our big trip every year was to Killington.
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:21.000
Brent Gardner: Um, you know, you found out about the gear not by going to the local ski shop, because it carried a much more limited selection that was out there. The place where you found to dream about the place you wanted to be skiing was in that magazine. So, when the snow wasn’t yet falling, but it was starting to get cold, you went to the magazines for the inspiration that told you that it was time to change that season.
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:39.000
Brent Gardner: Uh, and so, you know, I went looking to those things for those… that kind of stuff. And, you know, what I found out was that, you know, that wasn’t there. And, you know, truthfully, honestly, Stuart, maybe it wasn’t there back then. You know, as the more I find out about that media and how it worked back then, it was still just an entry into skiing for a kid who wasn’t from a ski town.
00:33:31.000 --> 00:33:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:59.000
Brent Gardner: And so that was the portal to which, you know, I was able to get into it more and more. But when it wasn’t there at all, you know, you kind of, you find yourself ungrounded by the opportunity to go to the familiar place to figure out where you should be. And so when I didn’t find that, I went on that search myself. And you’re right, Substack is a great opportunity.
00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:17.000
Brent Gardner: to kind of write yourself into the community that you want to be in. And so, when I didn’t know what I was looking for as I found it, I decided I wanted to document it and figure it out, because I was entering skiing from an entirely different perspective. I wasn’t late teenage, early 20-year-old person. I was, you know, I was older. I had a family. I had kids.
00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:32.000
Brent Gardner: And the dynamics about what it takes to do a ski day would have shifted if it was only that. But with modern passes and the mountains shifting, the kind of investment and the challenges that you face to be able to do skiing and get kids into skiing, I thought it was really interesting, and I thought it was something I could share.
00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:36.000
Stuart Winchester: All that time when you were away from skiing.
00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Did you think about it a lot? Did you miss it? Had you kind of put it out of your mind?
00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:59.000
Brent Gardner: I had not put it out of my mind. And unfortunately, I didn’t realize how much I hadn’t put it out of my mind. You know, a couple years ago, my wife had a very close family friend who lived in Vermont who passed away unexpectedly. And I said, you know, just jokingly, I’m like, well, when we’re going up, maybe we should.
00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:17.000
Brent Gardner: just go, and I’ll try skiing again. My wife’s reaction was so severe to this. She said, we’re absolutely doing it. She said, I am sick, year in and year out, of hearing you talk about how much you love skiing, and the fact that you haven’t done it. She’s like, we’re gonna do it. And Stuart, I’ll tell you, I came up with a list of excuses why we couldn’t.
00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:27.000
Brent Gardner: Um, but you know, I got back on the hill, and immediately it all came rushing back. And it was about trying to make up for lost time, which is what I’ve been doing ever since.
00:35:27.000 --> 00:35:30.000
Stuart Winchester: I love this line from your story.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.000
Stuart Winchester: When you came back to skiing, it was like breathing again.
00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Talk about that.
00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:35.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah.
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:57.000
Brent Gardner: You know, skiing’s one of those things that you don’t just do, you feel. And I’ll remember coming up the lift, I was in Vermont and we were at Sugarbush and I was going up the lift for the first time and I didn’t know whether or not I was gonna fall off the lift, whether or not, you know, it was gonna just be as disappointing as it was the last time I had skied.
00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:06.000
Brent Gardner: But I turned right, and instead of stopping to get my bearings like I thought I would, I, you know, I tipped over the head wall and went, and, like, riding a bike, it all came back.
00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:22.000
Brent Gardner: And you forget sometimes that feeling of skiing if you haven’t done it for a while, but you realize from that moment on, or at least I did, that I was never gonna be in a position where I didn’t do it again. Whatever capacity I could do it in, it was something that I just had to do.
00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:37.000
Brent Gardner: That level of compulsions only ever existed for me in skiing. There’s a lot of things that I’ve loved, I’ve had hobbies, but only one of them became a passion where it became indistinguishable from my personality and from the things that I wanted to do. And so, instead of denying it any longer.
00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:48.000
Brent Gardner: you know, I dove back in. And so, that feeling of relaxation that comes from skiing, of knowing where you are, and knowing what pressure will do to take you one place or another on a ski, um…
00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:52.000
Brent Gardner: I always loved it, and once I found it again, I knew I was never gonna let it go.
00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:55.000
Stuart Winchester: So that’s the body and the mind part of it.
00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:57.000
Stuart Winchester: What?
00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:05.000
Stuart Winchester: compelled you to start the newsletter then? So you found what was out there. What are you trying to add?
00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:23.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, no, I think that’s a great question. You know, the sense of community, I think, is a challenge that we face today in skiing, and because I was away from it so long, I wasn’t the frog boiling in water. You know, I came back to it, and I found that there was still something missing. You know, I still think that this is an incredible time for skiing, but.
00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:47.000
Brent Gardner: there were parts of it that I no longer recognized. And some of the changes that have happened around ownership and what that’s meant for the character of resorts, for the experience when you go, had shifted. And I’ll admit, in the first few times that I went, you know, it was just about the nostalgia of being back on skis. But very quickly, you start to realize what the experience is. And I mentioned, you know, I’ve got kids that are learning to ski, my wife’s learning to ski.
00:37:47.000 --> 00:38:04.000
Brent Gardner: seeing them go through something that, you know, I had helped other people do, what didn’t feel like that long ago was really different. And so, I realized, even with my knowledge from back in the day being as strong as it was, there needed to be guides for people to know where to look. And so, I wanted to capture what I saw.
00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:20.000
Brent Gardner: and what I found was that there were other people who said, Boy, this is really helpful, and and this helps me get on there, and if my goal is, as it always was, to grow the skiing world and to build a culture that’s sustainable in skiing. The best way to do it was to share it. And so we started this project.
00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:23.000
Stuart Winchester: When you say we, who’s we?
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:38.000
Brent Gardner: The brains of the operation is my wife. I’m very fortunate. She’s the one who said, let’s go do it. She’s the one who supported it ever since. And she’s learning to ski. And, you know, skiing is a social event. It’s an opportunity that if you’re by yourself, you go by yourself or with friends.
00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:48.000
Brent Gardner: But if you have a family, it’s a family event, and so that level of dedication, in particular with some of the challenges that there are to get into skiing this day, it’s got to be a family-supported event.
00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:58.000
Stuart Winchester: So you had this cool description of your winters now, and you said you’ve turned a sprinter van into a rolling base lodge, and I really like that image, and you…
00:38:59.000 --> 00:39:06.000
Stuart Winchester: split your winters. You do a lot of New England, you do a lot of Utah. You don’t live in either of those places, I don’t think.
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:07.000
Brent Gardner: No.
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:10.000
Stuart Winchester: So tell us how you’ve adapted your life.
00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:16.000
Stuart Winchester: to skiing with a family and a career.
00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:20.000
Stuart Winchester: How you convince them to do that, you know?
00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:37.000
Brent Gardner: Well, I’m lucky. I have a 7-year-old son who is as crazy about skiing as I am, and a 2-year-old daughter who, because of my 7-year-old son and I watching nothing but ski videos, you know, one of her first words was ski. And so, you add that to a very patient and supportive wife.
00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:57.000
Brent Gardner: who’s really learned to love skiing as she’s gotten better at it. Um, you know, we’ve done what a lot of people do in a lot of different ways and kind of limited it to one. You know, there’s people who decide they want to go out and run marathons, and they train for them all the time. There’s people that have other hobbies that do it. We’ve made this ours, and the great thing about it is it’s the kind of investment that, as a family, we’ll be able.
00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:49.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:39:57.000 --> 00:39:59.000
Brent Gardner: Hopefully for a really long time.
00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:02.000
Stuart Winchester: So, you know, I know for me.
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:04.000
Stuart Winchester: All right.
00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:07.000
Stuart Winchester: I push back a lot on folks who.
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:22.000
Stuart Winchester: only ski the West, even if they live in the East, or they come from the West and live out here and say, oh, it’s not worth it, because, you know, that’s great if you want to ski 5 days a year. Uh, but I was a little bit like that for a while.
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:27.000
Stuart Winchester: And what pried me out of it was skiing with my daughter, who’s now a freshman in college.
00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:30.000
Stuart Winchester: And I realized very quickly.
00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:32.000
Stuart Winchester: First place I took her was Hunter.
00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Uh, and I took her to some other big places after that, and I quickly realized that it was kind of stressing her out. And so, I started to explore all these little places. There’s just hundreds of them all over the country.
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:58.000
Stuart Winchester: And she really, really liked those, and it transformed the way that I viewed and saw skiing, and really planted the seeds for what became the storm, because I started to…
00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:04.000
Stuart Winchester: truly realized the variety that was out there when I got past the two dozen same places that everyone goes.
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:07.000
Stuart Winchester: Interested to hear how…
00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:12.000
Stuart Winchester: When you came back to it as a family man, how that’s.
00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Maybe it’s a little different for you, because you grew up skiing with your family, and I didn’t, but I’m just curious, like, how that helped reignite the passion, or fueled it, or frustrated it? You know, was there an adaptation period, because you can’t just go.
00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:38.000
Stuart Winchester: ski what you want. Just talk about skiing with your family and how doing the comeback with them has shaped what you’re trying to do here with this newsletter and your lifestyle.
00:41:37.000 --> 00:42:00.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And I think it’s the question that a lot of families face. You know, even if you’d been skiing the whole time and not had a break. Coming back to the ski world is tough. You know, instruction is expensive. Childcare on the mountain is crazy. And making sure it’s a really good experience is the most essential thing. You know, getting to the mountain is part of it. By the time you park for $25, pay the gas to get there.
00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:19.000
Brent Gardner: stop for a $15 breakfast and pay for a $250 lesson, you know, you really hope that they get a lot out of it. If you want skiing to be a lifestyle choice, it’s got to be something that parents are engaged in. And so, finding the mountains that gave the opportunity for great terrain, and the type of instructors who are focused on not just watching your kid for a few hours.
00:42:19.000 --> 00:42:35.000
Brent Gardner: But progressing their skiing in a way that’s meaningful and where they have fun doing it is so critically important. And you really have to go searching for those things because they’re not all the same. Good news is a lot of the stuff in the East — and I write about this a little bit — the West has certainly got the snow. I think the East has the culture.
00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:53.000
Brent Gardner: And when it comes to teaching, you know, young kids how to do this, there’s some absolute gems in the East. And I know you just, I think, did an interview, uh, with, with Eric Mogesen from IndyPass. What they’re doing at Black Mountain, treating it like a laboratory for this, I think, is the right method. I think all of the East is about this, and part of that’s because.
00:42:53.000 --> 00:43:10.000
Brent Gardner: they’re viewed by the Western resorts as a feeder resort. Go learn to ski there, and then come here to enjoy it. Um, that’s really kind of a bad model of thinking. The West has got phenomenal instructors. My son has progressed more on a Deer Valley day than he has anywhere else. But that’s not available to everyone all the time, and so for us.
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:26.000
Brent Gardner: It’s about finding the right balance of finding childcare so that that way our kids can ski and my wife can progress at her own rate, and then also finding places that have terrain where you can enjoy it if you’re an advanced or expert skier, you know, an intermediate can have fun too, and you can all meet at the bottom of the hill to get on the lift.
00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:45.000
Brent Gardner: Good news is, I think a lot of resort planning right now is giving you opportunities to do that, um, but, you know, you have to go looking for it. You have to know enough to look for it, and realize if it’s your first time skiing, there’s differences in the mountains you’re gonna find yourself on, and make a plan for it. So, that’s part of what we talk about, that’s part of what we’re gonna talk about.
00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:55.000
Brent Gardner: Um, but I think that’s so critically important. I think the East has got some advantages that are structural, and the West has got some as well. So, to your point, exploring it all kind of opens the aperture of what’s possible.
00:43:55.000 --> 00:44:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Let’s talk a little more about that. What do you think are the structural advantages in the East and what do you think they are in the West?
00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:16.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, you know what? In the East, you’ve still got a lot more of a sense that the places that you go are part of a community that you’re walking through. You don’t have to walk through a Disneyland-based lodge to get to a giant mountain. You know, my wife preferred for a long time Alta.
00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:43.000
Brent Gardner: when we went to Salt Lake City, and she did not like Deer Valley because it felt so big. You know, to your point, I grew up skiing, so I didn’t have that same sense of scale as a challenge, but if it’s the first time you’ve stood on a 10,000-foot mountain, it’s a whole lot different than if you have a chance to slide down a slope. And everyone shoots for, I want to go to the big one, I want to go to the great one, and maybe that’s true if your goal is apres, but if you want to develop in skiing, the East has got an opportunity for you to progress where you are to where you want to.
00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:59.000
Brent Gardner: And look, there’s some amazing terrain at Smuggler’s Notch, at Stowe, at Sugarbush. There’s trees and glades that the West could only wish that it has. And if that’s where you are, that’s great. But if it’s not where you are, you’ve got great places like Swain and Bristol and Holiday Valley.
00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:02.000
Brent Gardner: Uh, that have an opportunity to help you get there.
00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I love all the Western New York love. Mogensen is also from Western New York. Lots of good…
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:15.000
Stuart Winchester: ski mines coming out of there. So, so the… the Sprinter van, you actually drive across the country?
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:29.000
Brent Gardner: We have. This year, actually, I mentioned my wife’s the brains of the operation. This year, she was actually the driver of the operation, too. You mentioned, how do we adjust our life? I wasn’t able to make the trek. We leave the van in Utah, you know, for the winter, so that way we can have a base out there to go out of.
00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:45:29.000 --> 00:45:42.000
Brent Gardner: she wound up having to drive it by herself this year. And so she and two kids drove it from, uh, you know, the ski capital of Fairfax County, Virginia here, all the way out to Salt Lake City by herself. So, uh, that’s where it’ll be. That’s where we.
00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Do you have it set up as a camper? Do you sleep in it?
00:45:45.000 --> 00:46:02.000
Brent Gardner: We don’t usually. The biggest advantage to it, Stuart, is with two little kids, it has a bathroom on board. And so that gives us a great opportunity to stage warm dressing rooms, bathrooms on board, and it still provides us, I think, the best opportunity to have a base camp at the bottom of any hill we go to.
00:45:47.000 --> 00:45:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:54.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, look at that.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:08.000
Stuart Winchester: So you’ve written that Salt Lake City is the capital of American skiing.
00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:09.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah.
00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:10.000
Stuart Winchester: Defend that argument.
00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:27.000
Brent Gardner: Sure. Nine resorts. Time to lift is the shortest for the amount of options you have. If you are someone who’s a beginner and you want beginner terrain, it’s available. The best grooming in America is Deer Valley. Some of the best steeps in America are Snowbird. Some of the deepest snow in America is Alta.
00:46:13.000 --> 00:46:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:23.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:46:27.000 --> 00:46:42.000
Brent Gardner: If you want a locals feel, you go to Brighton. If you want a chance to be able to ski a very unique hill, you go to Solitude. If you want quiet luxury in nature, you go south to Sundance. And if you want to try some places that are experimenting with different stuff, you go to Powder Mountain up north or Snow Basin.
00:46:42.000 --> 00:46:58.000
Brent Gardner: The best food, the best instructors, the best grooming, it’s all there, and there’s an opportunity for you to sample whatever of it is that you want. If you’re an ICOM pass holder, you’ve got a lot of really great choices to utilize your days. This morning, Deer Valley actually added some to their base pass.
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:19.000
Brent Gardner: But the chance to be able to experience the largest ski area in North America, in the United States, in Park City, and the second or the fourth largest, I guess now, is Deer Valley with its new expansion. Or, you know, go up into the Cottonwoods, who are the snowiest. It’s all right there, and it’s all under an hour from the airport. I think that that, and the fact that 2034 is going to be the Olympic.
00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:25.000
Brent Gardner: location. That’s really exciting. That’s why it’s the capital of skiing in this country.
00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I don’t disagree with you. And I also like your take on Denver, which is that it’s a terrible place to fly in for a ski trip because of 1,000 reasons that we could get into.
00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Uh, the…
00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.000
Stuart Winchester: One counter argument to…
00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:59.000
Stuart Winchester: Salt Lake City is that skier visits have exploded so drastically over the past, since the first Olympics in 2002, uh, and particularly with the advent of the multi mountain passes that, that give such mass access and the population growth in Utah. And there’s so many.
00:47:59.000 --> 00:48:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Anything’s pressing in this. Sometimes the traffic gets really bad, especially in the canyons.
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:10.000
Stuart Winchester: Now, there’s probably some solutions to that. What do you think they should do about it?
00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:29.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, let me be the unpopular outsider that says this. I think the answer is simple. And, you know, we have to look no further than Europe, where they’ve done this really well. You know, I wrote just a few weeks ago about, you know, that maybe Vale should sell to Batman, sell to Michael Prince on this.
00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:49.000
Brent Gardner: You know, the vision for what that area could be doesn’t mean that you have to be an hour away from the airport. It could mean that you’re a gondola a ride away from some of the other world-class resorts. And the vision for being an interconnector with a gondola is incredibly interesting. If you’ve ever been there and skied to the top of any of these mountains, you see the other ones.
00:48:49.000 --> 00:49:06.000
Brent Gardner: They’re, uh, you know, they’re a poorly struck 5-iron away from each other sometimes. And so, the chance to be able to do the kind of infrastructure that we know about, projects that would be no… certainly far less technical than, like, the peak-to-peak at Whistler, and connect all of these world-class mountains where the option wouldn’t be to drive.
00:48:53.000 --> 00:48:55.000
Stuart Winchester: You know.
00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:21.000
Brent Gardner: But to simply get on a gondola, stay where you want to, ski where you want to, eat where you want to, and ultimately share both a collective identity of Salt Lake City area, but the individualism that’s been preserved at a lot of these resorts is incredibly attractive. And so.
00:49:21.000 --> 00:49:34.000
Brent Gardner: You know, I think today the mass conversation has been about a gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon, but the opportunity to connect these resorts shouldn’t be overlooked, and I think that plan is probably one of the more interesting parts of what Prince has been talking about.
00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:40.000
Stuart Winchester: I’m very pro gondola myself, and it’s stunning to me the…
00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:42.000
Stuart Winchester: degree to which.
00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:46.000
Stuart Winchester: The one obvious solution to…
00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:53.000
Stuart Winchester: a problem that’s based on too many cars in a place where there shouldn’t be cars. Uh, has been…
00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:56.000
Stuart Winchester: twisted into…
00:49:56.000 --> 00:50:00.000
Stuart Winchester: something that would harm the environment when that would probably be the best thing.
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.000
Stuart Winchester: for it, based on… it sounds like you spent quite a bit of time in Utah.
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:11.000
Stuart Winchester: What’s your sense of what’s driving this opposition? Because I think if you.
00:50:11.000 --> 00:50:18.000
Stuart Winchester: if you started from scratch, and you said, oh, we want to… Alton Snowbird, these places are amazing, we’re gonna build a ski resort up there.
00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:20.000
Stuart Winchester: I don’t think you’d build a road.
00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:35.000
Stuart Winchester: I think you’d build a lift, right? You’d have, like, a Zermatt-type thing, where instead of a railroad, you took a gondola up, and you just had, like, kind of a base station at the bottom. But what do you think is driving? Do you have a sense for kind of, like, the emotional…
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:36.000
Stuart Winchester: I.
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Atmosphere pushing the narrative here.
00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:56.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, look, it’s interesting because the people that I talk to in Utah, they’re simultaneously opposed to all the cars in the canyon. They think it’s bad, they don’t want it up there in the watershed, and they don’t want a gondola. And the truth is, they’ll readily acknowledge that cars are going to continue until there’s an alternative.
00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:50:56.000 --> 00:51:14.000
Brent Gardner: Look, I think that there’s a strong environmental angle where people are concerned about adjusting the environment that they love so much. I think there’s a challenge with the views. And I think if you remember where the gondola would today lead off, it’s down where houses are. It’s the end of the canyon. And so there’s people with property interests there, which is why, as you.
00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:29.000
Brent Gardner: Drive up to Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon, you’ll see a lot of signs in people’s yards, no gondola. But when you look at the challenges that they face, you know, driving up the the state road there, you are in the most avalanche prone part of the world.
00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:48.000
Brent Gardner: I mean, there is nowhere that sees the kind of avalanches that those canyons see, and so there’s a safety concern. There’s also the fact that you dramatically reduce the environmental impact. And those are the ones just up the canyons. If you think about the ability to have parking infrastructure in a place like Park City that’s far better designed.
00:51:48.000 --> 00:52:05.000
Brent Gardner: to be able to have more expansive parking available, and they would travel by gondola from there, you’re able to preserve a lot the kind of traffic that you’d see come up and down those canyons. And so, look, I think people are passionate about this. I also think, quite frankly, the ski industry has done a great job of eroding trust. I think a lot of that is worn by.
00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:20.000
Brent Gardner: by Park City, but some of it’s by Altera and Deer Valley with the way that they’ve done some of their financing. I can’t say whether that’s right or wrong, but I guess I could, but I won’t. But the truth is, you know, the ability for these big companies to be trusted by the locals, you know, it’s not there.
00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:22.000
Stuart Winchester: So…
00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:30.000
Stuart Winchester: Given… I mean, there’s obviously always going to be some controversies, and there… and, you know, nothing’s ever perfect. You’ve…
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Call this the golden age of skiing.
00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:39.000
Stuart Winchester: I agree with you, but lay it out for us. Why do you think that we’re living in the golden age of skiing?
00:52:39.000 --> 00:52:58.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah. Uh, remember, I started skiing on, you know, I was a tall kid, a big kid, you know, I was on 200, 200s, you know? I mean, so if you look at the gear today, you know, the difference isn’t just the ability to get to the mountain, it’s when you get there to have a great time. That’s how you get someone who has a great first day to take a second day.
00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:48.000
Stuart Winchester: There.
00:52:58.000 --> 00:53:17.000
Brent Gardner: And so, um, you know, I think the gear’s never been better. Snow baking has… baking has never been more prolific, and so the question of whether or not it’s a good season or a bad season is a matter of degree, because you’re always skiing. Um, I think that, you know, these modern passes, though there’s certainly some challenges on them that are covered well by you and others.
00:53:17.000 --> 00:53:30.000
Brent Gardner: you know, the opportunity to really have the world be your oyster, you know, when there’s hundreds of mountains that are available on a single pass, and the opportunity to try different terrain, um, that just didn’t exist before this. If you look at the price-adjusted.
00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:46.000
Brent Gardner: pass price. I think the total price of skiing per day is a different story. Um, this is a great time to do it. You know, the gear is better, you can stay dry and warm longer. Um, you know, we’ve, we’ve figured a lot of the things out that were a challenge back in the day. Um, and so I think it’s the golden age of skiing.
00:53:47.000 --> 00:53:50.000
Stuart Winchester: And why is that a controversial?
00:53:50.000 --> 00:54:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Argument because you started the post in, in, in almost of a defensive posture saying, you know, this, this is gonna be unpopular, but.
00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:06.000
Stuart Winchester: this is why I think this, but why is that such… why is optimism unpopular?
00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:20.000
Brent Gardner: Well, you mentioned, you know, you and I grew up in an age outside of social media. So our interaction with a lot of these resorts was looking optimistically at Greg Stump jumping off of something or, you know, seeing a video of just the incredible stuff. It was aspirational.
00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:09.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:38.000
Brent Gardner: Today, we are inundated with the challenges around skiing. The coverage is about the worst parts of it. Is Oasis Capital actually a Matthew Prince front? Are we starting to see the failure of Vail? Skier visits are down. It left from being the aspirational thing that you wanted to conquer to the constant inundation.
00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:55.000
Brent Gardner: with negative news. And so, if you see bad ski year, people couldn’t stop talking about it, and it got amplified through everything that we saw, instead of the fact that last year I spent about 30 days skiing in Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood Canyon, and had some of the best ski days of my entire life, you know?
00:54:55.000 --> 00:55:17.000
Brent Gardner: We had, we didn’t get powder growing up east, right? We got gunpowder. I mean, you know, a 3 inch dusting where the snow guns worked out well last night. That was what we had available. And so the chance to be able to ski top terrain, regardless of what kind of thing the weatherman brings you, it’s just never been like that before. The instruction methods are better. And so we have a lot of opportunity, I think, to recognize this is the golden age of skiing.
00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:55:17.000 --> 00:55:31.000
Brent Gardner: The problem is the dissonance with how hard it is to get more skiers into the sport, given some of the structural problems. It makes that the amplified version of the voice of skiing today, versus what it should be, which is, it’s never been better than it is right now.
00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:46.000
Stuart Winchester: Your answers are very comprehensive, and you clearly have a deep knowledge of modern skiing, and are clearly obsessed with it. Let’s talk about the newsletter a little bit here, Brent. Where… where are you headed with this? Is this… is the hope to…
00:55:46.000 --> 00:55:59.000
Stuart Winchester: build this up and turn this into your job. Right now, you’ve been very clear, it’s a side job. What’s your vision or hope for it at this moment?
00:55:59.000 --> 00:56:14.000
Brent Gardner: That’s not my goal. I love what skiing has given me. My hope is to be able to build a community where I’m not the only voice in it and where there’s more people that are doing what I’m doing. You know, I’ve had to go out and find a lot of people who would speak to the questions that I had.
00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:02.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:31.000
Brent Gardner: And I don’t know how many of those folks I speak to, but to everyone that I could, I want to. And so my goal here is to help expose people to how cool skiing is, help them understand the depth of not just the business, but the athletes, the gear, and all of it. Um, one of the challenges that we have is that if you weren’t born into skiing.
00:56:31.000 --> 00:56:47.000
Brent Gardner: You have to go looking for it, and then you have to figure out what to do with it. And that’s before you ever get to the mountain. And so I think that there’s got to be a place for people to go and explore on their own. The Internet has given us so much in the way to be able to go and find our own stuff. You know, the gates are coming down everywhere.
00:56:47.000 --> 00:57:03.000
Brent Gardner: And so I don’t just want the gates to come down. I want to hand people the trail map for what it takes to go from an interested party to a serious skier, or even an occasional skier. Or if you’re the kind of person that wants to bring your kids to the mountain and make them lifelong skiers. Where do you start? What do all these passes mean?
00:57:03.000 --> 00:57:20.000
Brent Gardner: And look, there’s a lot of people out there that do a far better job of this than I do. But my experience is from my perspective, and I’ve got an interesting perspective and hopefully an ability to help share with people where to look. Which is why I just, you know, I did an article here just a week ago about how to fix your sick algorithm.
00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:35.000
Brent Gardner: And I listed a bunch of ways for people who are tired of where social media is inundating them with stuff they don’t want to see, to add the kind of people who can help you learn more about skiing, get you into this. There’s a great story here in skiing, and I think everyone could be a part of that story. I just want to help them get to it.
00:57:35.000 --> 00:57:38.000
Stuart Winchester: It’s so funny. I remember…
00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:54.000
Stuart Winchester: uh, maybe around 2017-18, I went through… I spent a lot of time on my Facebook just following skiing stuff, unfollowing political stuff, unfollowing people who posted about political stuff, because I just needed a break from it all, and I made it an all-skiing feed.
00:57:54.000 --> 00:57:57.000
Stuart Winchester: And what that exposed me to, Brent, is…
00:57:57.000 --> 00:58:12.000
Stuart Winchester: that it’s great that the gatekeepers are gone, because otherwise you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation, because neither of us could have done what we did. But the downside of that is there’s a lot of crap out there, right? And a lot of slop you have to sort through to get good stuff.
00:58:13.000 --> 00:58:26.000
Stuart Winchester: when I find a newsletter like yours, I’m fired up about it, because I want there to be a lot of good ski content out there to choose from. I want a strong landscape, I…
00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:36.000
Stuart Winchester: you know, I want it to be like it… like I remember it being, with good quality stuff. I think your newsletter is… is good, it’s tight, it’s consistent, it… you cover a lot more…
00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:45.000
Stuart Winchester: you cover a lot of things I don’t, you know, gear, weather, competition, and I think that pretty much anyone who likes the storm.
00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:48.000
Stuart Winchester: would also like the Savage Mountain Collective. So…
00:58:48.000 --> 00:58:53.000
Stuart Winchester: I want people to go to it, tell them how to find you.
00:58:55.000 --> 00:59:12.000
Brent Gardner: Yeah, well, SavageMountainCollective.com is the website. That’s got all the different ways that we’re reaching out to people. Savage Mountain Collective is also the name of the substack. You know, we go multiple times a week there. It will increase in frequency as we get into the season. We have a podcast where we’re going to be doing some gear reviews.
00:59:12.000 --> 00:59:31.000
Brent Gardner: They’re not going to be the technical gear reviews. There’s a lot of people that do that really well, but we’re going to talk about use cases for the things that can help make your ski better. That’s on YouTube, and so we’re really excited for a lot of new content we’ve got coming this year. The great thing about it is this gives me an opportunity to help share skiing with the world, and so.
00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:59:31.000 --> 00:59:46.000
Brent Gardner: my version of skiing is a really fun one, and I hope everyone else gets to enjoy it the same way, but check us out in those spaces. We’re on Twitter, we’re on X, we’re on pretty much all the social media channels. Our goal here is to, you know, even though these are all self-selecting mediums.
00:59:46.000 --> 00:59:50.000
Brent Gardner: provide as many open doors for people to enter this world as possible.
00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:59.000
Stuart Winchester: You got great energy, great optimism, great point of view. I love it, and I love following along, and I wish you the best of luck with it.
Stuart Winchester: Alright, Brent, this is awesome. I hope that your audience explodes after this. You know, I don’t know how much influence I have, but whatever I do, I hope that it runs your way. So thank you very much, and we will actually do this again.
01:01:13.000 --> 01:01:27.000
Stuart Winchester: really soon. We’re going to do another little episode. We’re going to flip this around. Brent’s going to ask me some questions. You’re going to have to wait for tomorrow to hear that, but me and Brent are going to have that conversation here in about two minutes. So, thank you, Brent, very much for coming on. I really enjoyed chatting with you.
01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:29.000
Brent Gardner: Thanks, Stuart.
Listener reaction to Sipapu pod
Stuart Winchester: That was Brent Gardner of the Savage Mountain Collective. That was a lot of fun, Brent. I will include the subscription link to his newsletter on the article that accompanies this podcast at stormskiing.com. There truly is…
01:40:52.000 --> 01:40:55.000
Stuart Winchester: A dearth of great ski riding.
01:40:55.000 --> 01:41:08.000
Stuart Winchester: compared to what there could be, and I think Brent’s doing an awesome job. So, please give him a follow, subscribe to his newsletter. If you like my newsletter, you will definitely like his. He goes…
01:41:08.000 --> 01:41:22.000
Stuart Winchester: even more in-depth than a lot of things that I don’t touch, like weather, and competitions, and uh… and gear. So… so it’s a great follow, and I want to see that newsletter grow and thrive. I like competition, I like.
01:41:22.000 --> 01:41:29.000
Stuart Winchester: having a very busy landscape, right? There’s, you know, a dozen Michigan football podcasts that I listen to.
01:41:29.000 --> 01:41:31.000
Stuart Winchester: There should be…
01:41:31.000 --> 01:41:34.000
Stuart Winchester: Just as much on skiing, or…
01:41:35.000 --> 01:41:43.000
Stuart Winchester: you know, at least lift-serve skiing in the U.S, because there are certainly as many skiers as there are Michigan football fans. Okay.
01:41:43.000 --> 01:41:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Let’s get some reader-listener reaction on the Sipa Poo podcast that I put out on Monday. Gustav said, when skiing at Sipa Poo last winter, my dad asked a Lifty how to pronounce the name of the place.
01:41:58.000 --> 01:42:01.000
Stuart Winchester: He replied, Lift 3.
01:42:01.000 --> 01:42:17.000
Stuart Winchester: That’s awesome. Scott Abraham says, I did a tour of small New Mexico mountains 15 years ago, and had the good fortune to hit Sipapoo after a powder dump. Basically had the place to myself. What a little cutie of an area. Even went into the trees, but I was a lot younger then.
01:42:17.000 --> 01:42:32.000
Stuart Winchester: But I thought the lifts were ancient then, the lodge, a dump, etc, looking at the surrounding terrain and dreaming of the possibilities. So delighted they are expanding, though I probably won’t live to see it, given how long it takes to conquer the environs.
01:42:32.000 --> 01:42:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Environazis. And then there’s something about Oregon football that I’m not going to read, because that’s irrelevant, Scott. We don’t talk about football here on the Storm Skiing Podcast. I don’t know why you would include that.
01:42:44.000 --> 01:42:47.000
Stuart Winchester: P.S. Your lettuce looks great, dude. I know.
01:42:47.000 --> 01:43:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Patrick says, excellent interview! Sipapu seems really special. I’ve only been by there in October, but it’s in a gorgeous mountain valley, and it would definitely be fun to ski sometime, hopefully with all that new terrain added.
01:43:00.000 --> 01:43:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Regarding the new format, I appreciate you experimenting with different ideas and increasing the content delivery rate. Something to maybe think about is to give us a heads up a few days before you do an interview, just in case subscribers have questions or topic requests that you decide might be worth talking about.
01:43:16.000 --> 01:43:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Like, I bet some of your subscribers might have Whistler Blackcomb questions. By the time I’m writing this comment, you’ve already recorded the interview. Yeah, it’s a fair point.
01:43:26.000 --> 01:43:27.000
Stuart Winchester: And…
01:43:28.000 --> 01:43:32.000
Stuart Winchester: I have done that some in the past.
01:43:32.000 --> 01:43:34.000
Stuart Winchester: The…
01:43:34.000 --> 01:43:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Reason I haven’t done more of it is right now I’m really aiming to get the interviews shorter, and I usually don’t have any problem coming up with questions. It’s usually…
01:43:44.000 --> 01:43:52.000
Stuart Winchester: pretty easy to cover 30 minutes, and obviously I usually go way over that. So, uh, what I would like to do…
01:43:52.000 --> 01:43:55.000
Stuart Winchester: That is probably more in this spirit.
01:43:55.000 --> 01:43:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Is… haven’t asked me anything with…
01:43:58.000 --> 01:44:00.000
Stuart Winchester: One of the…
01:44:00.000 --> 01:44:11.000
Stuart Winchester: More cerebral operators, some of the people who are thinking way different, like John Schaefer or Joe Hessian or Eric Mogenson.
01:44:11.000 --> 01:44:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Say, hey, I’m going to do a Q&A with them, your questions, and have you send them in. So let me think about that a little more and let me dial in the format.
01:44:21.000 --> 01:44:28.000
Stuart Winchester: I’m not opposed to it. And I think it’s a good idea. I just have to…
01:44:29.000 --> 01:44:30.000
Stuart Winchester: I have to…
01:44:30.000 --> 01:44:44.000
Stuart Winchester: do it where it’s most needed, right? Because we all have to balance out our time. But thank you, Patrick, I appreciate the suggestion and the reply. All right, that will do it for us. The next podcast will be actually another episode.
01:44:44.000 --> 01:44:53.000
Stuart Winchester: with Brent. We recorded two. He flips it around and asks me some questions. That was a lot of fun. So, a little more from Brent tomorrow, and then I’m also recording a podcast with…
01:44:53.000 --> 01:44:58.000
Stuart Winchester: One of my favorite operators, Rick Schmitz. Talk about cerebral, guys.
01:44:58.000 --> 01:45:00.000
Stuart Winchester: He is a really…
01:45:00.000 --> 01:45:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Smart, smart thinker, and I’ve only had him on the pod once, but one of the things of the new format is I can get him on more often. So he owns Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and Crystal Ridge, three small ski areas in Wisconsin that were added to the Icon Pass this week, and we are going to talk about that. Also, his new lifts going in at Little Switz.
01:45:18.000 --> 01:45:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Super, super cool story.
01:45:21.000 --> 01:45:27.000
Stuart Winchester: To get all of those conversations the moment they’re live, please subscribe to the Storm Skiing Newsletter at stormskiing.com.
01:45:27.000 --> 01:45:40.000
Stuart Winchester: The very best way to support my mission of independent ski journalism is to upgrade to a paid subscription. That will get you access to all of the content below the paywall, which is most of what I write, and that is the only way to interact with the podcast.
01:45:40.000 --> 01:45:46.000
Stuart Winchester: You can also go to stormskiing.myshopify.com and pick up a shirt, hat, or other swag at the Storm store.
01:45:46.000 --> 01:45:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Follow along on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok at Storm Ski Journal. Until next time, stay well, stay safe. I’m Stuart Winchester, and I’ll talk to you again very soon.
