About Bear Den
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Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the CEO of Bear Den Partners, which operates four New England ski areas. His family has operated 1,180 vertical-foot Berkshire East, Massachusetts since 1976, and acquired 1,000 vertical-foot Catamount on the New York-Massachusetts border in 2018.
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Stuart Winchester: In 2025, the family teamed up with a local group to acquire 2,057 vertical foot Burke Mountain out of receivership. And earlier this year, Bairdan purchased a majority stake in Smuggler’s Notch, which with 2,610 vertical feet, 1,060 acres across three mountains, and 322 inches of average annual snowfall, is one of the largest, snowiest, and most fun ski areas in eastern North America. John Schaefer is my guest. John is a very good friend of the storm, and I welcome him back.
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Stuart Winchester: How is life leading up to ski season, John?
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Jonathan Schaefer: Oh, is what?
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Stuart Winchester: How is life?
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Jonathan Schaefer: How is life? It’s good.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah, what delayed you today?
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Jonathan Schaefer: I’m, uh…
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Jonathan Schaefer: Uh, a skunk. So I’m a little tired. I have some Diet Pepsi here to kickstart the day, but my dog got a skunk, uh, first thing, which is great.
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Stuart Winchester: Good.
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Stuart Winchester: Let’s go.
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Stuart Winchester: Thank you.
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Stuart Winchester: Massachusetts.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And it was better once I opened the door and it all came wafting into the house.
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Stuart Winchester: Oh, God, Berkshire’s living. All right, well, I appreciate you fighting through that and joining us here, John. So, let’s talk smugs, first of all, because.
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Stuart Winchester: You know, Bill Stritzler, I have a ton of respect for what he did at Smuggler’s Notch, and how he’s maintained the atmosphere, and it’s consistently voted one of skier… by skiers as one of their favorite mountains, one of the best family mountains. It’s also just a badass expert mountain.
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Stuart Winchester: Uh, the… the…
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Stuart Winchester: the…
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Stuart Winchester: issue that comes up over and over again is, of course, the chairlifts. There are 7 haul lifts. They are a combined 392 years old. Uh, they are a combined 29,439 feet long. That’s 5.58 miles. Uh, Madonna is the oldest.
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Stuart Winchester: 6,719-foot-long 1963 haul, it got a new top terminal in 2002, which I believe is the drive terminal. Sterling is the next longest, it’s a 1964 haul, and the Village Lift is the next longest at 5,155 feet, that’s 1967, so…
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Stuart Winchester: those are sort of the three main lifts, and then there’s some other little lifts, Madonna 2 and a T-bar and such, but… but John…
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Stuart Winchester: I think everyone wants to know, what are you gonna do about the Lyft fleet at Smug’s, because you have a contingent that loves the old Lyfts and doesn’t want you to, but you have another contingent that’s like…
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Stuart Winchester: That’s why I don’t go there. So what do you have in mind? What can you tell us?
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Jonathan Schaefer: Well, I mean, it’s a problem that’s highlighted by all the fun facts you just gave us here. And give you credit for that, going back to the announcement letter and post that you did.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Um…
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Jonathan Schaefer: It’s the balance between preservation and conservation, right? I mean, it’s an environmental argument, it’s a scary management argument, it’s… do you preserve it, and do you keep it just exactly like it is?
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Or do you conserve an asset on into the future? And that’s a fancy way of saying that, nice try, you’re not going to quite get the answer today.
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Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, we have to have some reality here, right? Which is…
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Jonathan Schaefer: Those lifts are in excellent shape.
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Jonathan Schaefer: maintenance going on through the years and decades will become harder and harder and harder. And we’re gonna have to address the problems.
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Jonathan Schaefer: before they become problems. So.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Eyes wide open.
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Jonathan Schaefer: We are looking at everything at Smuggler’s Notch, including the lift system.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Also, in perfect honesty, there isn’t just.
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Jonathan Schaefer: a single plan that’s gonna work there. You know, there’s not.
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Jonathan Schaefer: you know, there’s not an endless pool of capital to go through and replace. How many? How many lineal feet of lift is that.
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Stuart Winchester: 29,439.
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Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, that’s just under six miles of lift line.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, that’s a lot right? And it’s a pretty big, angry mountain.
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Stuart Winchester: Right.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: So when you look at that hillside and you contemplate driving.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Concrete up to the top, or…
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Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, you’re flying helicopters in, and it’s a massive project.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: So, we have to just do…
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Jonathan Schaefer: the right amount of work to keep that mountain, you know, going and thriving into the future. But also, you know, to your point, you know, people love it. You know, people love these mountains. They love them to death sometimes. We don’t want that to happen.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Um, but we respect everybody’s point of view and we’re just gonna have to work with our community to, to sort of telegraph those changes when they come up. And right now there’s, uh, there’s no major changes. You know, I don’t have a.
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Jonathan Schaefer: an SE group plan that I can peel off the desk here and lay it out in front of you and show you exactly what’s going on. I think that we’ve been around long enough that we got an idea, but we’re not quite there yet.
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Stuart Winchester: I think the big question for Smugs that I’ve been trying to figure out for a while is, if you want the throwback experience in New England, you just drive an hour down the road to Mount River Glen, and they have a single chair that goes 2,000 vertical feet, and they have great terrain, and they’ve put a lot of money into creating.
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Stuart Winchester: the facade of being a 1940s ski area. But it’s modern, they groom, they make snow below 20-whatever, 100 feet. So, the question, I think, for Smuggler’s Notch is.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
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Stuart Winchester: Is there room for a second throwback ski area in New England, and do you want it to be that? Do you want, for example, to say, no, we’ll never put in a high-speed lift, like smug should have slow lifts even if they’re, even if they’re new, uh, or, you know, the lift.
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Stuart Winchester: The trail footprint should stay. Do you have any thoughts on modernization?
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Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, it really gets to capacity, Stuart. And this is, this is, it’s like this, it’s almost like the saber metrics of skiing, right? Like where the numbers, what do they mean? I’m sitting here at Berkshire East and pardon the screwdriver, it’s my pointer.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Jonathan Schaefer: I’ve got two lifts in front of me.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: One’s a high speed quad that moves around 600 people per hour, and one’s a sky track quad.
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Jonathan Schaefer: with over twice as many chairs. It does. It’s rated to move up to 2,400 people per hour.
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Stuart Winchester: Wait, your high-speed quad moves 600 people an hour?
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Jonathan Schaefer: 1600.
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Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Sorry, I may have misspoke.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And we can bump it to 1800.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: But you know, right out here I got a fixed script that moves more people than a high speed.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Now…
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Jonathan Schaefer: up the road from me is another mountain, Berkshire Snowmason. It no longer exists. It was founded by a World War II vet. And he has a great quote from the early 1960s, where he says.
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Jonathan Schaefer: People care more about how they go up the mountain than how they look coming down it.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And at the time, he was complaining about a ski lift that went in at Jiminy Peak, where he had T-bars, and he felt that he had been left behind. So there’s a lot of different emotions. There’s, like, the raw numbers.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Fixed scripts are great. They a lot of butts in the air. My dad.
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Jonathan Schaefer: I think it was talking to Everett Kircher, and that’s what Everett used to tell him. He used to say.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Their butts are in the air, you know, and not on the hill.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And so you either have people in a line, on a lift, or on a trail.
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Jonathan Schaefer: If you accelerate one of those numbers, they’re gonna show up someplace else. It’s just…
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Jonathan Schaefer: Physics. There’s no way around it.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And so you gotta look at all that stuff when you do this work. And you know, while I don’t have a solid answer, I do have a commitment to doing our best to.
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Jonathan Schaefer: to getting the right answers for the resort.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And for our customer base. And in terms of nostalgia, there’s never going to be a point.
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Jonathan Schaefer: where there’s not a nostalgic lift, you know, in the foreseeable future at Smuggler’s Notch.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: But the the question is that lift appropriate for the terrain? Is it the right one? Is the wrong one?
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: But inevitably, I mean, your stats tell all, you know, we’re we’re gonna be doing something at some point.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think there’s two good models that I look to of…
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Stuart Winchester: really atmospheric ski areas that have upgraded without losing that cachet. One is A-Basin, where the oldest lift, I think, is 2007 Zuma, and they have a combination. They have a high-speed quad, a high-speed six-pack, two long fixed-grip quads, and when they replaced the Pella Vicini.
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Stuart Winchester: double chair, I think in 2020, they just replaced… it was a 1970s lift, they replaced it with a brand new double chair that was made, I think, by Doppelmeyer. Same exact specs, it’s just a new machine. The other example is Alta, which, if you go back to the 90s, had a bunch of double chairs just all over the mountain.
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Stuart Winchester: have consolidated most of those to one line and replaced them, almost all but Wildcat Double, with high-speed chairs. So, looking at those two models and thinking about it, and people still love those ski areas because they’re the ski areas.
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Stuart Winchester: Looking at those two models, do you start to get a sense of, like, is it really that it’s a 1962 Hall double that people care about, or is it more that you create, as you said, a chair that matches the terrain? Do you get any inspiration from those other skiers as you think about this?
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Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, I mean…
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Jonathan Schaefer: I would say, we’ve all been to a place, whether it’s a restaurant or a ski area, I mean, I love to ski, so I’ve skied all over the world, and you go someplace, and you go back to it, and somebody did something to screw it up, and it pisses you off. I mean, that’s really what.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And we’ve all seen it. We’ve all experienced it.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Then we’ve also seen thoughtful design.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Um…
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Jonathan Schaefer: when we took over the Hermitage Club during COVID and started operating it, there was 27 point-of-sales.
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Jonathan Schaefer: on the first floor alone.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Jonathan Schaefer: just to handle food and beverage. Right? And so you start to add it up. And it’s like, Wow, you know, if maybe if they just designed the food and beverage system better.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: you could have gotten through it with a a lot less point of sale, folks, and.
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Jonathan Schaefer: design is really critical, it’s scariest. And… you really have to understand what you’re doing when you make a 30, or 40, or 50, or, in Smug’s case, 60-year investment in a ski lift.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Um, because…
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Jonathan Schaefer: You don’t wanna fly that concrete up that mountain more than you have to. You know, you don’t wanna undo it down the road. So.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Again, there’s a lot of factors that go into how to tweak a mountain and what makes sense and what doesn’t.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And how not to ruin it. Um…
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Jonathan Schaefer: And, and that’s, it’s a big, it’s a big task, you know, with a lot of responsibility that we definitely, you know, we, we’re not just gonna go in there willy-nilly and start throwing stuff around and start moving things. ‘cause that, that is how you screw it up.
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Stuart Winchester: Yep.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Oh.
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Stuart Winchester: Do you think you have a priority, John, between Morse, generally considered the beginner mountain, Sterling, generally considered the intermediate mountain, and Madonna, generally considered the expert mountain, as far as where you think upgrades should be concentrated first, infrastructure-wise? And we can also talk about snowmaking here, which I know you’ve already announced.
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Jonathan Schaefer: It sort of matches the, the available equipment to the mountain, I would say. You know, there’s, there’s certain, there’s certain things we, we gotta figure that out. That’s, that’s, that’s what the next six months of my life will be focused on.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: So talk about the snowmaking upgrades that you’ve already announced at Smugs, and what you hope to achieve there.
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Jonathan Schaefer: So this some going into the sale. We had a pretty good understanding of of some of the broad strokes work that needs to get done, and snowmaking is always a huge.
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Jonathan Schaefer: a huge factor for us.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And how we approach resorts, you know, it’s literally, you go up the mountain, and you come down the mountain. And ideally, you come down on as many different trails as possible, and with as good of conditions as possible, and that’s the snow aspect.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And so, we always start there, you know that. Uh, smugglers, each mountain always has different, sort of.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Assets, you know, it’s like…
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Jonathan Schaefer: You buy a house, it’s got a great kitchen, you don’t like the bathroom, right? And then vice versa.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Smugs… so we laid out what we thought needed to happen at Smugs, then you sort of do the low-hanging…
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Jonathan Schaefer: medium hanging, high hanging fruit, you know, to achieve the goals. And where, and we wanted to spend money where you would, the skiers would see the first, every dollar yielded the greatest results.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And so we focused a lot this year on.
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Jonathan Schaefer: fixing broken things and and dilapidated equipment, putting in fixed infrastructure on the hill. So the snowmakers themselves don’t have to lug things around the less lugging they do on.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Jonathan Schaefer: big, difficult mountains in the northeast, the more snow they tend to make.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And then really incorporating, uh, the snowmaker’s experience into the upgrades, so that they felt that they were part, you know, of defining what that list was gonna be. And so, it’s Smuggler’s Notch, right? So there’s 3 mountains, so it’s…
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Jonathan Schaefer: It’s everything times 3. You know, there’s broken thing. There’s the fixed equipment that needs to be put on the hill. So we attacked each one of the the areas of the the resort, and tried to address bottlenecks or issues that could unlock a lot of.
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Jonathan Schaefer: potential out of the system. And it’s sort of the first salvo. You know, you… scary operations, you know, the way you fix mountains, it’s like waves on a beach. You get…
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: You get a capital plan in January, you start to execute, if you’re lucky, by April.
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Jonathan Schaefer: The wave falls on the beach and then your next thing you know, it’s November and you’re back into operating and you gotta do it again. And there’s this cycle.
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Stuart Winchester: Yep.
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Jonathan Schaefer: This is what we could get done this… this year on a short, you know, transaction window, and then love plans for next year’s, too, and…
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: Those will probably have more meaningful impact.
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Stuart Winchester: Well, where are you at, John, on… you know, one thing I liked about when Eric Mogensen bought Black Mountain in New Hampshire is the… it’s such a fun mountain, but the top was rarely open. They have a double chair that goes to the summit, but it has a mid-station, and for years and years, sometimes the summit wouldn’t even open, and he made a commitment right away, hey.
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Stuart Winchester: run the lift to the top as much as possible, and he has, including all the way into May the last two years. How much have you thought about.
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Stuart Winchester: Getting Madonna open a little earlier in the season and, and consistently making sure that peak is open, uh, as late as possible because that’s sort of, I mean, Sterling’s a lot of fun, but, but Madonna is the alpha peak, right? That’s the, the biggest lift, the biggest vert, the toughest terrain. That’s what people think.
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Stuart Winchester: when they think of the challenging terrain as smug. So have you thought much about Madonna and its operating schedule?
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Jonathan Schaefer: The bottlenecks aren’t really Madonna. It’s everything that leads to Madonna.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Jonathan Schaefer: And that’s what we went to fix.
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Jonathan Schaefer: with the snowmaking system. So if you can chew through everything else, like, you gotta get beginner terrain open, you have to get…
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: something for your your pass holders as fast as possible, and if that fast thing becomes faster.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jonathan Schaefer: or those bottlenecks disappear, then we’re we’re hitting Madonna.
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Jonathan Schaefer: earlier. So it it has a cascading effect throughout the whole system.
01:29:20.000 --> 01:29:36.000
Stuart Winchester: So speaking of pass holders, let’s talk about passes. So since I was just talking about Eric and Black Mountain, let’s talk about Indy Pass. So you were an early adopter of Indy Pass, going back to 2019, put Berkshire East on it, catamount right away. As soon as you bought.
01:29:30.000 --> 01:29:32.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Okay.
01:29:36.000 --> 01:29:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Burke, or were involved in Burke, it switched over from an allied mountain to full, and you just added Smugs, which is huge for IndyPass holders. You now have Jay and Smugs. I mean, four days of those alone is worth the price of an IndyPass, let alone the other dozens of mountains you have there. So talk about.
01:29:48.000 --> 01:29:50.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Correct?
01:29:52.000 --> 01:30:06.000
Stuart Winchester: your relationship with IndyPass, and ultimately why you recommitted… because they’re one-year contracts, right? So why you recommitted by adding all four of your mountains, including Smugs, which you haven’t had a winter to run yet, onto Indy?
01:29:59.000 --> 01:30:00.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:30:06.000 --> 01:30:16.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Indy’s a really important piece for, you know, independent skiers in the country. And we, I used to have debates with different people pre Indy Pass.
01:30:15.000 --> 01:30:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:21.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And one of the debates was, and I won’t name them, was around.
01:30:21.000 --> 01:30:27.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Could there ever be a pass that represented those types of mountains?
01:30:27.000 --> 01:30:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:30:27.000 --> 01:30:34.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Because, let’s just be… let’s face it, you have the Epic Pass, which has Vail and Whistler, and…
01:30:34.000 --> 01:30:42.000
Jonathan Schaefer: when Doug branded the IndyPass, he gave a voice to a whole, you know, quite frankly, the majority of the ski world.
01:30:42.000 --> 01:30:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:30:42.000 --> 01:30:45.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Which was feeling a little left out at the time.
01:30:45.000 --> 01:30:46.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:30:45.000 --> 01:30:51.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And so it’s done a lot for small ski areas across the country.
01:30:50.000 --> 01:30:51.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:30:51.000 --> 01:30:59.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But it’s certainly done a lot for ours at Berkshire East and Catamount. So we’re, what, 5 or 6 years in at having Indy at those resorts?
01:30:58.000 --> 01:30:59.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:30:59.000 --> 01:31:01.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We’ve certainly been.
01:31:01.000 --> 01:31:18.000
Jonathan Schaefer: sort of like Indy Pied Pipers along the way. It, it wasn’t necessarily a layup that we were gonna do it at Smuggler’s Notch. You know, it seemed obvious maybe from the outside and we’d have to get there. But our commitment really is, is to the full pass holders and the ticket holders of a resort.
01:31:03.000 --> 01:31:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:31:16.000 --> 01:31:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:31:19.000 --> 01:31:36.000
Jonathan Schaefer: First, you know, they’re, they’re sort of our primary constituents and what India Smugs allows us to do is we, we are very experienced with using the capacity controls in any pass at our other mountains. So we, a reservation system at Berkshire East and Catamount.
01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:34.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:31:36.000 --> 01:31:48.000
Jonathan Schaefer: that allows, you know, for only certain number of capacity per day. And we’re pretty experienced on managing, you know, weekly, or monthly, or daily, even, on how we want to handle that.
01:31:40.000 --> 01:31:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:31:48.000 --> 01:31:56.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So we felt comfortable with not overwhelming the mountain. And what happens is, I think one of my critiques of the ski business is it’s like…
01:31:56.000 --> 01:32:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, with the multi passes, you have this slosh of people, you know, you fill a bucket full of water. It’s like you got a Home Depot bucket and you’re walking down the street with a bucket and it inevitably spills out and gets you wet.
01:32:10.000 --> 01:32:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And to me, that slosh is what happens when you have.
01:32:14.000 --> 01:32:21.000
Jonathan Schaefer: unlimited access everywhere. Right? So if Berkshire East, for example.
01:32:21.000 --> 01:32:22.000
Jonathan Schaefer: was…
01:32:23.000 --> 01:32:29.000
Jonathan Schaefer: was in a huge pass product, and we happened to get 3 feet of snow, which happens occasionally.
01:32:29.000 --> 01:32:37.000
Jonathan Schaefer: and 50,000 people show up at Berkshire East, that slosh would break the town, it would break the mountain, it would break everything, right?
01:32:36.000 --> 01:32:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:32:37.000 --> 01:32:52.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And we don’t wanna have that. We actually do care about the experience at these mountains. That being said, it’s important to fill up the excess capacity so we can do the snowmaking upgrades and we can do the resort upgrades that at Smuggler’s Notch or the any of the other mountains that you will see the snowmaking.
01:32:52.000 --> 01:32:57.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you will see the improvements. And so we have to optimize.
01:32:57.000 --> 01:33:02.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, around the midweek and the non busiest times.
01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:08.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And then, once once that stuff starts to happen, the snowmaking improvements.
01:33:08.000 --> 01:33:12.000
Jonathan Schaefer: More people start to show up in off-peak times. You feel that energy?
01:33:12.000 --> 01:33:17.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And then you got something to work with. And so.
01:33:15.000 --> 01:33:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:33:17.000 --> 01:33:20.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I think that’s where we’re headed with that relationship, and, you know…
01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:22.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Uh…
01:33:22.000 --> 01:33:35.000
Jonathan Schaefer: it’s also why we didn’t do the Four Mountain Pass right out of the gate. You know, I think a lot of people wondered, well, will there just be a Bearden Pass? And Bearden, you know, our core mantra is distinctly local. Like, we love.
01:33:35.000 --> 01:33:41.000
Jonathan Schaefer: these mountains. We love the people that make them up and the history and the legacy of those resorts.
01:33:41.000 --> 01:33:51.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And we care about, you know, doing our best to be caretakers, you know, so that the mountain we buy is still recognizable by the people.
01:33:51.000 --> 01:33:55.000
Jonathan Schaefer: who utilize it, you know, 10 or 15 years from now when they come back to it.
01:33:55.000 --> 01:33:59.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And so not overwhelming.
01:33:59.000 --> 01:34:05.000
Jonathan Schaefer: not having overwhelming numbers is a it’s a real. I mean, it’s probably the thing I’ve thought about most this year.
01:34:06.000 --> 01:34:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so you have a couple different levels of competition here. You have the other big multi-mountain passes, you have your four mountains and your different pass products, and you’re kind of competing with yourself a little by being part of India. Now we’re seeing.
01:34:21.000 --> 01:34:36.000
Stuart Winchester: Other competing passes, the Snow Pass, run by Snow Operating, start to follow that model of two days at each mountain, and they got some really nice ones out of the gate, Whiteface and Gore. Do you think that Indy Pass will remain important long.
01:34:36.000 --> 01:34:52.000
Stuart Winchester: term to you as you… as you build up, you know, you have four mountains to work with, that’s a pretty attractive little portfolio, especially the way they run north-south, with Catamount being two hours from New York City, and Smuggs being this great destination, and everything in between, and all easy to get to off the freeway. So… so what…
01:34:44.000 --> 01:34:45.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:34:52.000 --> 01:34:57.000
Stuart Winchester: long… as you think about passes long-term, do you think you’ll stay on a multi-mountain pass? Do you think.
01:34:57.000 --> 01:34:59.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, uh…
01:34:59.000 --> 01:35:05.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We’re we’re into hypothetical worlds. We’re we’re into indie. We like indie. So.
01:35:01.000 --> 01:35:02.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:35:03.000 --> 01:35:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:35:05.000 --> 01:35:08.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Why don’t you tell me where you think the market’s going and we’ll.
01:35:08.000 --> 01:35:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yes, sir.
01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:27.000
Stuart Winchester: I’m liking the competition. I’m liking that there’s a lot of different options for consumers right now. I think the Indy Pass is, it’s the largest pass coalition ever assembled in the history of the world that I’m aware of. And I just think for consumers, particularly in New England to have.
01:35:16.000 --> 01:35:17.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Okay.
01:35:21.000 --> 01:35:22.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:51.000
Stuart Winchester: Those mountains, Smuggs, Jay, Waterville. And Berkshire East is such a great mountain, too, and it’s almost always a top 10 on Indy Redemptions, which surprised me. So, I love where you’re going. I also love the Bash Badge. Can you talk about the Bash Badge at Smuggs? Because you actually have the Bash Badge Plus, which maybe they had before, I don’t know if that’s new. And if that concept could roll out across your other mountains, and I know you’re not…
01:35:34.000 --> 01:35:35.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:35:51.000 --> 01:35:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Uh, Mr. Price Guy, so I can throw the prices up here. Um, the…
01:35:58.000 --> 01:36:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Well, the bash pads fits between a day ticket and a full pass, you know, just sort of.
01:36:01.000 --> 01:36:03.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:15.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Functionally and emotionally. And it’s an important piece of the product, and we’ve… we have evaluated it across the board. There was a… it’s… it was funny, you know, it’s funny not funny. We hadn’t communicated it yet, but um…
01:36:05.000 --> 01:36:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:36:16.000 --> 01:36:21.000
Jonathan Schaefer: A lot, there was so much concern out of the sort of the smug social media.
01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:36:21.000 --> 01:36:32.000
Jonathan Schaefer: around their prob… quote-unquote, they are probably going to get rid of the bash badge. I’m they. They were never going to get rid of the bash badge. It’s an important part of the puzzle, and uh…
01:36:26.000 --> 01:36:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:36:29.000 --> 01:36:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:36:33.000 --> 01:36:36.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, it speaks to…
01:36:36.000 --> 01:36:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know what you’re saying about the industry.
01:36:39.000 --> 01:36:41.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Indy’s an important funnel.
01:36:40.000 --> 01:36:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:36:41.000 --> 01:36:51.000
Jonathan Schaefer: for visitation for us. You know, Bash Badge is an important funnel. People get so… you get so locked into your routine, right? Even your social media routine, or your…
01:36:48.000 --> 01:36:49.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:36:51.000 --> 01:36:57.000
Jonathan Schaefer: web presence routine. So you’re only exposed to what you’re exposed to. And.
01:36:57.000 --> 01:37:13.000
Jonathan Schaefer: the reality is, it’s tough business, you know. The winters are tough. There’s a the ex. The equipment’s extremely expensive, and we have 13 weeks to really get after it each year. Yeah, we need to be as in front of as many people as possible, so they can come up and.
01:37:13.000 --> 01:37:18.000
Jonathan Schaefer: rent from our homeowners and buy food in the kitchens and.
01:37:18.000 --> 01:37:21.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Ski awesome terrain. So that’s…
01:37:22.000 --> 01:37:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Let me break down this product real quick because I think it’s so good. So the Bash Badge, you pay $159 upfront and then you get $30 lift tickets or $20 half-day lift tickets for the entire season whenever you show up. The Bash Badge, Bash Badge.
01:37:37.000 --> 01:37:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Plus is $249, has the same deal, but it’s sort of a pseudo-season pass, because you get…
01:37:44.000 --> 01:38:04.000
Stuart Winchester: direct-to-lift, you know, unlimited days from opening day, which is usually around Thanksgiving, through December 18th, and then from March 22nd through the end of the season, which at Smuggs is somewhere between the first and third weekend in April, usually. I don’t know if you want to push that at all. But that is an awesome product. I mean, is this something that you want to roll out across the portfolio?
01:38:05.000 --> 01:38:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We’re evaluating it. Yeah. All the mountains are different, right? So that’s…
01:38:06.000 --> 01:38:07.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:38:08.000 --> 01:38:10.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:38:10.000 --> 01:38:15.000
Jonathan Schaefer: which may work, something that may work great, and I’m not, this is more generic.
01:38:15.000 --> 01:38:21.000
Jonathan Schaefer: at Burke may not work at Catamount. You just pulled up Catamount there, right? That’s a different user base.
01:38:17.000 --> 01:38:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:38:18.000 --> 01:38:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:38:21.000 --> 01:38:24.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Different demand profile. Right? So.
01:38:25.000 --> 01:38:28.000
Jonathan Schaefer: These mountains are going to run.
01:38:28.000 --> 01:38:42.000
Jonathan Schaefer: relatively independently, but also, we want our guests to know what to expect when they go to a Bear Dam Mountain, which is that independence, the quality, the focus on the fundamentals, you know, good snow, um…
01:38:30.000 --> 01:38:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:38:40.000 --> 01:38:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:38:42.000 --> 01:38:47.000
Jonathan Schaefer: and efficient operations. I mean, it’s… the weather’s ever-changing, so you can’t always promise it, but…
01:38:47.000 --> 01:38:51.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, you’ll certainly get our best effort in any given time.
01:38:51.000 --> 01:38:55.000
Stuart Winchester: How would you know, John, like, what would be your sign?
01:38:55.000 --> 01:38:58.000
Stuart Winchester: that you were messing up SMUGS, that you were going in the wrong direction.
01:38:58.000 --> 01:39:00.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Well, I’m sure I’d hear about it.
01:39:01.000 --> 01:39:10.000
Stuart Winchester: As a… as a skier, what do you not want smugs to be? Because you’re a skier, I mean, you… you know, you’ve skied every day of your life that…
01:39:10.000 --> 01:39:13.000
Stuart Winchester: you know, has been… there’s been snow on the ground, I believe.
01:39:13.000 --> 01:39:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:39:14.000 --> 01:39:16.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I, um…
01:39:16.000 --> 01:39:22.000
Jonathan Schaefer: For me, it’s that overwhelming presence of just, you know, you’re on a trail and.
01:39:22.000 --> 01:39:24.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You feel like you’re gonna get.
01:39:24.000 --> 01:39:30.000
Jonathan Schaefer: just overrun, and you’re just… you want to go home. I mean, I’ve had ski days where.
01:39:30.000 --> 01:39:32.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Um…
01:39:32.000 --> 01:39:34.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, for example.
01:39:35.000 --> 01:39:38.000
Jonathan Schaefer: My wife and I did a trip to a.
01:39:38.000 --> 01:39:40.000
Jonathan Schaefer: a larger, you know.
01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:52.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Northern Mountain a couple years ago, and I was invited to an event, and I couldn’t get the person who, you know, I get comp tickets, it’s just one of the perks, who was there to comp the ticket, and…
01:39:47.000 --> 01:39:49.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:39:52.000 --> 01:40:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So it’s like, oh, I’ll go through the ticket line and really experience a day trip, you know, as the general consumer of one of these resorts, you know, which, you know, I’m generally at smaller mountains doing our thing.
01:40:03.000 --> 01:40:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:40:04.000 --> 01:40:05.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And…
01:40:05.000 --> 01:40:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I think almost 500 bucks of ticket fees later.
01:40:09.000 --> 01:40:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Wow.
01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, we’re in the middle of an overrun.
01:40:15.000 --> 01:40:16.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Trail.
01:40:16.000 --> 01:40:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:40:16.000 --> 01:40:22.000
Jonathan Schaefer: My wife, who’s an advanced intermediate, was just like, can we go home to Berkshire East?
01:40:22.000 --> 01:40:24.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, so.
01:40:22.000 --> 01:40:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:40:24.000 --> 01:40:33.000
Jonathan Schaefer: if I feel like I want to go home right now, as much feels like home to me. I had a lot of great skiing there this winter. I brought my daughters up, and.
01:40:26.000 --> 01:40:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:40:28.000 --> 01:40:30.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:40:33.000 --> 01:40:37.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, there’s awesome terrain. We’re looking at the map here.
01:40:37.000 --> 01:40:47.000
Jonathan Schaefer: it feels like a western mountain. I mean, it it’s big enough that the whoever cut the trails, there’s there’s grade reversals to uphills to big rolls to.
01:40:39.000 --> 01:40:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:40:47.000 --> 01:40:52.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, snow-covered trees, and I know it’s not always like that, but we just had the best.
01:40:52.000 --> 01:40:54.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Few weeks of skiing this year.
01:40:54.000 --> 01:40:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:40:54.000 --> 01:40:59.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And you can really let it rip. Woods are awesome.
01:40:59.000 --> 01:41:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Great family experience. That’s what home feels like. And.
01:41:04.000 --> 01:41:11.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, I’m I associate with myself, you know, in in general, with people that appreciate that. And.
01:41:10.000 --> 01:41:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:41:11.000 --> 01:41:17.000
Jonathan Schaefer: That’s we’re here to curate this and to grow it, but not ruin it.
01:41:17.000 --> 01:41:27.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And that’s very subjective, right? So we have to run good businesses, and we’re never gonna make everybody happy. But I think in the effort we give.
01:41:27.000 --> 01:41:29.000
Jonathan Schaefer: People will appreciate it.
01:41:29.000 --> 01:41:31.000
Stuart Winchester: The more…
01:41:31.000 --> 01:41:35.000
Stuart Winchester: skiing changes in New England, the more…
01:41:35.000 --> 01:41:46.000
Stuart Winchester: people love what Smuggs is, and I’m looking at the trail map here for those watching on YouTube or StormSkiing.com, and what you see back here is Stowe. Now, I love Stowe. I think it’s the best mountain.
01:41:46.000 --> 01:41:48.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, me too.
01:41:46.000 --> 01:42:04.000
Stuart Winchester: in New England. I just love the fall lines, I love the skiing. Vail purchased it, of course, in 2017. Bill Strissel, the former owner, had proposed a gondola from Sterling across, which is much flatter than this, across to Stowe.
01:42:04.000 --> 01:42:14.000
Stuart Winchester: Is that idea dead? Is that still something you would consider? You can still walk between Stowe and Smugs, of course, but is a potential lift something you’re considering?
01:42:14.000 --> 01:42:25.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Uh, you know, I think we’re considering getting back to where we were, which is… I think it would be awesome to skin up Sterling, but they don’t allow it, and um…
01:42:25.000 --> 01:42:28.000
Jonathan Schaefer: come over to smugs and go back and forth.
01:42:28.000 --> 01:42:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: we’re not in the market for paying for that lift, and I read the reviews online, just as well as everybody else, on what locals thought about it, so… that’s not the…
01:42:31.000 --> 01:42:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
01:42:39.000 --> 01:42:43.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, I want to develop a great great relationship with those guys and the Gm. There.
01:42:43.000 --> 01:42:52.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Started at Mount Snow, and we have a ton of mutual friends. And he’s very, very, very well respected, you know, within the Vail organization.
01:42:52.000 --> 01:42:54.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And so is awesome.
01:42:54.000 --> 01:42:56.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But, um…
01:42:56.000 --> 01:43:12.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, I think that I have trail run it all summer and fall, and it’s a it’s a great trail. I was there, and I think it was 1997. Somebody dumped a snow cat into the pond trying to drive across it. I saw the snow cat as a 17 year old or 18 year old.
01:42:57.000 --> 01:43:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, Mike’s a good dude.
01:43:01.000 --> 01:43:03.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:43:04.000 --> 01:43:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:09.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
01:43:12.000 --> 01:43:14.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, man.
01:43:12.000 --> 01:43:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, um…
01:43:15.000 --> 01:43:17.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah.
01:43:15.000 --> 01:43:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Is it still there?
01:43:17.000 --> 01:43:20.000
Jonathan Schaefer: No, some other… I think they got out with a scooter.
01:43:17.000 --> 01:43:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:43:20.000 --> 01:43:21.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Um…
01:43:21.000 --> 01:43:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, you know, I mean, Mike’s a great guy, and I skied with Mike in April, and folks don’t understand this, and I beat it to death, but unless you’re from the region, and I didn’t understand it until I moved out here, Northern Vermont is so good. I mean, 322 inches of snow, that’s the second snowiest.
01:43:39.000 --> 01:44:02.000
Stuart Winchester: In the east that Smuggs gets, of course, JP gets a little more, and maybe they get the same. I don’t know, people measure things different, but last year I was supposed to take my family to Tahoe in April. I canceled it, went to Stowe and Killington instead, and we got a couple of powder days of Stowe in April. It is really, really good skiing up there, and there’s tree skiing more often than not. So, I mean, you’ve got such a prize up there, and if people have not been up there.
01:44:02.000 --> 01:44:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Uh, go now so you can watch the evolution. Uh, John, I wanna…
01:44:06.000 --> 01:44:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I’m gonna try to text you a picture here, Stuart. I’ve got me pounding the Lincoln Gap and I think 2003.
01:44:08.000 --> 01:44:10.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:44:14.000 --> 01:44:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:44:15.000 --> 01:44:18.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But I I grew up skiing up there.
01:44:18.000 --> 01:44:22.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And the scheme is awesome.
01:44:22.000 --> 01:44:24.000
Jonathan Schaefer: The, um…
01:44:25.000 --> 01:44:33.000
Jonathan Schaefer: There’s there’s nothing like it. And it’s it’s it’s not. You know it. It is Northern Vermont, right? It’s not.
01:44:31.000 --> 01:44:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:44:33.000 --> 01:44:34.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Banff.
01:44:34.000 --> 01:44:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
01:44:35.000 --> 01:44:40.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And it’s okay. There’s great communities. There’s great.
01:44:40.000 --> 01:44:48.000
Jonathan Schaefer: There’s great people. There’s a huge legacy of people that love these mountains and care for them. And utilize them.
01:44:42.000 --> 01:44:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:44:48.000 --> 01:44:50.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So.
01:44:50.000 --> 01:44:56.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We’re just lucky to be the next man up here, and we’re fired up to do a good job about it.
01:44:55.000 --> 01:45:19.000
Stuart Winchester: I’m fired up that you bought it. There was a lot of chatter that Vail may buy it and combine it with Stowe. Again, love Stowe, but I do think that the Northeast in any ski region benefits from having strong independent operators. I’m pulling up Burke’s old trail maps for those following along here. So Burke, the trail network’s been similar for years and years, but there used to be some more lifts. So here we’re going all the way back.
01:45:19.000 --> 01:45:27.000
Stuart Winchester: 1983, when Burke was sponsored by Camel. Can you imagine? Camel cigarettes, guys.
01:45:25.000 --> 01:45:28.000
Jonathan Schaefer: One of our ski coaches was a, um…
01:45:28.000 --> 01:45:30.000
Jonathan Schaefer: A Marlboro man.
01:45:29.000 --> 01:45:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so you see different lifts here. So you see the Summit lift, which was replaced. Now this is a high-speed quad. And there was another lift over here. So looking at Burke’s modern trail map here, John, I believe there’s some room for expansion out here. I believe you could probably infill some lifts. So what are your thoughts on Burke now that you’ve had a year running that guy?
01:45:51.000 --> 01:45:55.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I think Burke’s an awesome mountain.
01:45:55.000 --> 01:46:02.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, if we’re talking about the trail map, we’ve got the green section down here in Sherbourne, which is one of the best beginner mountains.
01:45:59.000 --> 01:46:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:46:02.000 --> 01:46:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And that was a little bit of a.
01:46:04.000 --> 01:46:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Surprise for me, because I spent most of my time at Burke on Warren’s way.
01:46:09.000 --> 01:46:10.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:46:10.000 --> 01:46:12.000
Jonathan Schaefer: facing, and then…
01:46:12.000 --> 01:46:18.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Big Dipper. I think we raised the first Eastern Cup there the day after the Pats won their first Super Bowl.
01:46:18.000 --> 01:46:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow.
01:46:18.000 --> 01:46:20.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Okay.
01:46:20.000 --> 01:46:25.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Which was awesome. Middlebury showed up with no time to inspect, because it was a late night, but it was…
01:46:25.000 --> 01:46:28.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Lots of energy, um…
01:46:28.000 --> 01:46:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And then the Upper Mountain, and you can kind of see, if you go back up to the Upper Mountain, just how steep… you see where all the black diamonds are in the middle, in the double blacks? That’s just a feature of the resort, so…
01:46:32.000 --> 01:46:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:46:34.000 --> 01:46:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:46:39.000 --> 01:46:41.000
Jonathan Schaefer: It’s hard to get…
01:46:41.000 --> 01:46:50.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, there’s a total lack of green trails from the summit, and that’s a priority for us, is increasing that blue access over the next couple of years.
01:46:50.000 --> 01:46:55.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But also, you know, we’ve done a ton of snowmaking that work there. I think we…
01:46:56.000 --> 01:47:02.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We knocked out… we were able to cut 500 hours of snowmaking time.
01:47:02.000 --> 01:47:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:47:02.000 --> 01:47:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Year over year.
01:47:04.000 --> 01:47:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Wow.
01:47:04.000 --> 01:47:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: and open more terrain, far more terrain than the year prior. And so.
01:47:07.000 --> 01:47:09.000
Stuart Winchester: Amazing.
01:47:10.000 --> 01:47:13.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We, uh…
01:47:14.000 --> 01:47:29.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We are doing a lot more work this year. And so last year, it’s like the wave on the beach analogy. We were able to throw a big wave up on the beach and we got a ton of stuff done. But this year, it’s a lot of the interconnections and sort of like finishing off the work. I’d say we got 80% of the way home last year.
01:47:16.000 --> 01:47:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:47:23.000 --> 01:47:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:47:29.000 --> 01:47:30.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:47:29.000 --> 01:47:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And this year, a few more guns, filling in some holes, moving water around more effectively.
01:47:37.000 --> 01:47:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
01:47:40.000 --> 01:47:47.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I think people are going to notice maybe even as big a difference as the year prior. Midburg Lodge is getting some updates.
01:47:46.000 --> 01:47:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:47:48.000 --> 01:47:49.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah, it…
01:47:48.000 --> 01:48:15.000
Stuart Winchester: How did that translate business-wise, John? You know, Burke had sort of been, it had been in receivership for nine years when you purchased it, and it was part of the whole Jay Peak scandal, and Jay Peak got purchased in 2022 by Pacific Group Resorts, but Burke was still orphaned, and not that there weren’t capable folks running it, but the first thing you did was, I think, triple snowmaking capacity. So how did that translate business, skier visits-wise? What can you tell us about last year at Burke and the kind of momentum you were able to establish there?
01:47:55.000 --> 01:47:56.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:48:16.000 --> 01:48:27.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So I do believe that energy at a resort is a very palpable thing. You can either feel it, or you can’t. You know, you’ve all been places, and it’s like, oh, what happened to the restaurant? And it’s like, oh, the chef left, and.
01:48:27.000 --> 01:48:31.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You just know it’s over yet.
01:48:31.000 --> 01:48:47.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know the receivership was. It was sort of like slack tide for that mountain for almost a decade, you know, is not really coming or going, and I think our us stepping up and the grand family’s commitment to the resort, which is runs really deep.
01:48:48.000 --> 01:48:54.000
Jonathan Schaefer: was able to bring some of that, inject that energy. And then the next step.
01:48:54.000 --> 01:49:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: is, and I’ve been doing the Ted Lasso analogies with you for years, but it’s like getting people, not only the resort staff, but the guests to believe.
01:49:04.000 --> 01:49:15.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, that it is a great mountain. There’s phenomenal glades. You know, I… I was stuck on Warren’s Way half my life whenever I’d be there, but, you know, so it was a revelation what the glades were like. Um…
01:49:15.000 --> 01:49:27.000
Jonathan Schaefer: in the… in the acquisition period, and then skiing them last year. It’s a… it’s a great mountain. I don’t think it’s ever really had its chance. I think we’re the seventh or eighth ownership group. That thing is like a…
01:49:27.000 --> 01:49:41.000
Jonathan Schaefer: a ship without a rock, without a lighthouse that ships keep running into, and we’re gonna try to avoid being the next ship that breaks apart on those rocks right there. But I think there’s a really thoughtful way to do it.
01:49:41.000 --> 01:49:54.000
Jonathan Schaefer: quite frankly, it’s shocking how close it is to people. You know, I don’t think people realize that it’s really not that much further from Boston than a Mount Snow or a Killington. Obviously, it doesn’t have the scale of those resorts. Um…
01:49:54.000 --> 01:49:57.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But it does have that sense of community.
01:49:57.000 --> 01:50:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: it’s a great mountain, it’s a beautiful hotel, and… and the town itself is full of wonderful restaurants, largely supported by Kingdom Trails and skiers, you know, so it’s a very adventurous… we did a kickoff party there, and…
01:50:10.000 --> 01:50:11.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I mean, there’s…
01:50:11.000 --> 01:50:13.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Eight Olympians.
01:50:13.000 --> 01:50:18.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, at the kickoff party that live in and around that town.
01:50:18.000 --> 01:50:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Incredible.
01:50:18.000 --> 01:50:31.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And it attracts a really diverse set of outdoor adventurers, and it’s a… it’s a throwback community. And uh… I think as our guests start to discover it, you know, in the wintertime, I think a lot of people discovered it for KT.
01:50:31.000 --> 01:50:33.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Which we’re also doing a lot of work.
01:50:33.000 --> 01:50:40.000
Jonathan Schaefer: With to integrate with Kingdom trails, and we’re the largest single owner of Kingdom trails, and so it’s.
01:50:40.000 --> 01:50:44.000
Jonathan Schaefer: you know, people start to feel that energy. And.
01:50:44.000 --> 01:50:50.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Again, we’re here to work it and to build it and, you know, do our best to caretake it.
01:50:50.000 --> 01:51:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it looks far north, John, but it’s right off I-91, and I agree, there’s some of the best glades in New England. Let’s talk quickly about Berkshire East, where you’ve teased an expansion for several years, I believe, right over in this area.
01:51:02.000 --> 01:51:05.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We’re going on a decade, I think.
01:51:04.000 --> 01:51:09.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay. Is it right over here? Am I pointing to the right place? Farlookers right on the trail map?
01:51:05.000 --> 01:51:06.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:51:09.000 --> 01:51:13.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Um, it goes from the wind turbine.
01:51:12.000 --> 01:51:14.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:51:14.000 --> 01:51:17.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Where the thunder writing is, somewhere right in there.
01:51:14.000 --> 01:51:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:51:16.000 --> 01:51:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay. Yeah.
01:51:17.000 --> 01:51:26.000
Jonathan Schaefer: in between Mohawk and Thunder down over towards those fields at the lower left. I would say it’s not well represented on on this map. But.
01:51:25.000 --> 01:51:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay, so there’s more terrain. Is it basically in here, or is it over on this side?
01:51:30.000 --> 01:51:35.000
Jonathan Schaefer: It’s thunder is sort of like the off ramp for it. So it’s the return.
01:51:34.000 --> 01:51:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, so you would go into Thunder off the back of the mountain?
01:51:37.000 --> 01:51:42.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You would go off of… you see where Rogers World is? The lift would go through Rogers World.
01:51:39.000 --> 01:51:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Here.
01:51:41.000 --> 01:51:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:51:42.000 --> 01:51:43.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Um…
01:51:44.000 --> 01:51:49.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Through to the wind turbine, and there’d be 3 or 4 trails back there, and…
01:51:46.000 --> 01:51:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:51:49.000 --> 01:51:52.000
Jonathan Schaefer: It hasn’t quite launched yet.
01:51:49.000 --> 01:51:51.000
Stuart Winchester: Thank you.
01:51:52.000 --> 01:52:04.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But again, you know, it’s easy to cut this stuff, it’s easy to build it, it’s harder to actually operate it and take care of it, so we keep optimizing our resort, you know, and the snowmaking there, and then…
01:52:04.000 --> 01:52:08.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Hopefully, we’ll get to a point here where that’s doable again. So.
01:52:08.000 --> 01:52:23.000
Stuart Winchester: And you took out a triple chair that was based this summer right here. That was a used lift from Ski Rio New Mexico. I think the plan was to put it over here. I don’t know, it looks like you could probably serve it with the existing lifts, but any thoughts on lifts or not as part of the expansion?
01:52:13.000 --> 01:52:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:52:24.000 --> 01:52:26.000
Jonathan Schaefer: It would require a lift, yeah.
01:52:25.000 --> 01:52:27.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay. Okay.
01:52:26.000 --> 01:52:27.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So.
01:52:27.000 --> 01:52:45.000
Stuart Winchester: But not… it doesn’t sound like, uh, like you can put a timeline on it, and last time you were on, you also talked about a potential expansion at Catamount. Again, I’m looking at the trail map. Uh, if you look at the far right side of the trail map, I believe that’s where the potential expansion was. Any thoughts on… on that, or are you pretty happy with Catamount as it is?
01:52:31.000 --> 01:52:32.000
Jonathan Schaefer: No.
01:52:45.000 --> 01:52:47.000
Jonathan Schaefer: We are, uh…
01:52:48.000 --> 01:53:03.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I would say that we’re never complacent, right? So the idea of happy is very temporal and focused on what’s going on. I think at all these mountains, we’re focused on snowmaking. Folks will see some snowmaking upgrades at all the resorts.
01:52:54.000 --> 01:52:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:53:03.000 --> 01:53:06.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So in terms of lift layouts, you know it’s.
01:53:06.000 --> 01:53:15.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Those are private landowners that you happen to point out up there, so they may or may not be the right, you know, people to point your mouse at.
01:53:10.000 --> 01:53:12.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:53:14.000 --> 01:53:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
01:53:15.000 --> 01:53:24.000
Jonathan Schaefer: it’s all on the table, right? And it’s just a matter. Now my job is to really, you know, look at four resorts and what their needs are.
01:53:16.000 --> 01:53:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
01:53:23.000 --> 01:53:25.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:53:24.000 --> 01:53:27.000
Jonathan Schaefer: and advance the ones that make the most sense.
01:53:27.000 --> 01:53:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: from resort to resort to resort, and categorize those. And a lot of what we’ve been doing this year, I mean, this conversation has been very appropriately anchored in, um, sort of asset upgrades.
01:53:40.000 --> 01:53:45.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But I’m trying to build an organization that can really thoughtfully run this.
01:53:45.000 --> 01:53:50.000
Jonathan Schaefer: these resorts and do a good job with it and build the right team.
01:53:50.000 --> 01:53:57.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And so a lot of the governance and organizational work that we’ve done this year will really help support those.
01:53:57.000 --> 01:54:00.000
Jonathan Schaefer: going forward into future years. So.
01:53:58.000 --> 01:54:16.000
Stuart Winchester: So talk a little about that. Actually leave us with that today, John, because I just find the Schaefer family story so compelling. You know, Roy drove his station wagon out from Michigan full of kids and just, you know, bought this junky mountain and fixed it up, you know, just out there buying scrap from all over the country.
01:54:09.000 --> 01:54:10.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Okay.
01:54:16.000 --> 01:54:23.000
Stuart Winchester: And, uh, then handed it off to you and your brother, who modernized it. And, and you’ve, you’ve built, uh…
01:54:23.000 --> 01:54:30.000
Stuart Winchester: you know, you’ve built now this four-mountain portfolio, so a couple elements to that is, number one, if I have this right.
01:54:30.000 --> 01:54:43.000
Stuart Winchester: you actually sold Catamount Berkshires to Bearden, so you’re no longer the owner, you’re an employee, probably for the first time, really, in your life, you know, and not part of a… necessarily a family-owned thing.
01:54:38.000 --> 01:54:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Mm-hmm.
01:54:41.000 --> 01:54:44.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Outside is an ice cream.
01:54:43.000 --> 01:54:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so what’s that transition been like, I guess?
01:54:47.000 --> 01:54:56.000
Stuart Winchester: emotionally, and how do you handle that professionally? Like, going from, you know, your dad out there with a hammer, you know.
01:54:56.000 --> 01:55:05.000
Stuart Winchester: nailing up some snow gun to, uh, I know that’s not how you put up a snow gun, but, um, but to, you know, running a professional organization that oversees four mountains in three states.
01:54:59.000 --> 01:55:00.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yep.
01:55:06.000 --> 01:55:26.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Evolve or die, right? So I couldn’t be more fired up about it. There’s Ken Graham and I had the opportunity to build five years of trust. We worked on Burke for four or five years. And that could be, you know, five calls a week or one call every five months. You know, it’s hard to say, but we really stuck it out together.
01:55:07.000 --> 01:55:09.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
01:55:14.000 --> 01:55:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:55:22.000 --> 01:55:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
01:55:26.000 --> 01:55:43.000
Jonathan Schaefer: and had a good understanding of of who we were as people and as families. You know their their dad’s a Michigan family, too. They are a Michigan family. The grandfather was a ecologist working for the University of Michigan. So it’s a lot of shared family history here. Ski racing.
01:55:40.000 --> 01:55:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:55:43.000 --> 01:55:58.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And that’s important when you do this stuff because these, you’re in it for the long haul. You know, you jump into rapids with somebody and you want to know what they’re about. And so we had that opportunity and it wasn’t as spontaneous as it may have seen on the outside.
01:55:58.000 --> 01:56:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
01:55:59.000 --> 01:56:00.000
Jonathan Schaefer: So…
01:56:00.000 --> 01:56:05.000
Jonathan Schaefer: There’s there’s also pieces of the organization that I always wanted to bring.
01:56:05.000 --> 01:56:11.000
Jonathan Schaefer: You know, I wrote my Berkshire operator manual in 2015, and it was clunky, and…
01:56:11.000 --> 01:56:12.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Um…
01:56:12.000 --> 01:56:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: And and probably just.
01:56:15.000 --> 01:56:17.000
Jonathan Schaefer: half finished, right?
01:56:17.000 --> 01:56:29.000
Jonathan Schaefer: But a lot of the elements that we’re bringing to the table around role clarity, how to do jobs, you know, those threads started there. And I always wanted to build something bigger.
01:56:29.000 --> 01:56:32.000
Jonathan Schaefer: than what we had. And that’s why I always sort of like, you know, I’ve been.
01:56:32.000 --> 01:56:43.000
Jonathan Schaefer: doing these crazy side gigs for years, right? Like the Hermitage Club, or rebuilding Bosque, or Big Red Cats, or working in Arkansas building bike parks. It’s never been…
01:56:43.000 --> 01:56:46.000
Jonathan Schaefer: It’s always been like, okay. Well.
01:56:46.000 --> 01:56:51.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I can’t spin my wheels endlessly at Berkshire East or Catamount.
01:56:52.000 --> 01:56:58.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Let the people responsible do their jobs and go do something else for a little while.
01:56:58.000 --> 01:57:08.000
Jonathan Schaefer: try to keep building. So that’s now I feel like we’ve married our family’s legacy and the information we’ve learned.
01:57:08.000 --> 01:57:14.000
Jonathan Schaefer: to a platform and another family that that will help us, you know, fulfill this vision.
01:57:15.000 --> 01:57:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Doing all that, John, and you still made time for the podcast, you know, one of the… one of my hopes out of the shorter form is we can have you on a little more often as you announce new things, so… listen, I cannot thank you enough for making the time, especially with the wildlife emergency, with all you’ve got going on in winter coming up, so… so thanks so much, John, I really appreciate it.
01:57:18.000 --> 01:57:20.000
Jonathan Schaefer: I love it.
01:57:24.000 --> 01:57:25.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Sure.
01:57:28.000 --> 01:57:30.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Yeah.
01:57:31.000 --> 01:57:34.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Well, you’re lucky you’re not with me, because otherwise you’d stink.
01:57:34.000 --> 01:57:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Well, I don’t have a sense of smell, that’s one of my secret weapons. Yeah, yeah, so, uh, anyway, alright, thanks a lot, John, I’ll talk to you soon.
01:57:35.000 --> 01:57:36.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Hehe.
01:57:37.000 --> 01:57:39.000
Jonathan Schaefer: Okay. Oh, nice. Great.
01:57:43.000 --> 01:57:45.000
Stuart Winchester: All right, take care. Bye.
