Who
Jay Dougherty, President and General Manager of Mount Southington, Connecticut
Date Recorded
Oct. 2, 2026
About Mount Southington
Owned by: Multiple shareholders descended from the ski area’s founders
Year founded: 1964
Pass affiliations:
Snow Pass – 2 days, no blackouts
Snow Triple Play – up to 2 days, no blackouts
These two passes have a lot of overlap, but completely different rosters:
Base elevation: 210 feet
Summit elevation: 571 feet
Vertical drop: 361 feet
Skiable acres: 51 acres
Average annual snowfall: 40 inches
Lift count: 8 (1 triple, 3 doubles, 4 carpets) – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mount Southington’s lift fleet
Why I interviewed him
A lot of ski areas are beautiful because they’re set within nature’s masterpieces. Mount Southington is beautiful because it’s not:
How cool is that? A ski area in the middle of a neighborhood. A neighborhood that most of us could probably afford to live in. Kids grow up across the street. If it snows enough, they can probably ski from their front door to the lifts.
Good thing the ski hill is already there. We rarely build cool things next to where we actually live anymore. But it’s hard to get rid of a ski area once it’s built, unless it fails. Southington [Suh-thing-ton] is not going anywhere. Three of the bump’s chairlifts are under 20 years old (two are younger than five), and a replacement for the fourth - Stardust - starts, well, any second now (a new top terminal is sitting in the parking lot).
A few dozen neighborhood ski areas like this still exist across America, mostly east of the Mississippi. Sometimes the neighbors hate them, especially during all-night snowmaking season. But very few people living in a house near a ski area today would have been surprised to find themselves living near a ski area, since the facility would have in most cases preceded them. Maybe a few even moved in to be close to skiing. It’s cool to imagine being one of them, waking up to morning turns three months per year. How cool - like having a lake house on a kinda small lake. It’s not Aspen, but most of us aren’t billionaires, and it’s nice to think that, in a few far-flung corners of America, there’s a backdoor to that sort of life that no one’s really checking.
Additional resources
New England Ski History details Mount Southington’s early days.
A bit more on Southington’s Northstar lift, received second-hand from Craigmeur, New Jersey, migrating for its third life as Lost Valley, Maine’s Chair 3.
Somehow all my Mount Southington photos have vanished into the digital void, but Instapost preserves this shot of a really awesome sunset from my 2021 visit. Top of the Stardust chair:
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
Stuart Winchester: My guest today has been president and general manager of Mount Southington, Connecticut since 2014.
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Stuart Winchester: Established in 1964, Mount Southington offers 51 acres of skiable terrain served by four chairlifts and several surface lifts. Jay Doherty is my guest. Jay, welcome to the storm. You are the first Connecticut representative to ever be on the podcast, not.
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Jay Dougherty: Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: for any reason other than I haven’t been able to figure out who to talk to, so thank you very much for coming on today.
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Jay Dougherty: Oh, absolutely. I’m excited to be here. Excited to join you.
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Stuart Winchester: And you’re a true Connecticut guy. We were chatting a little bit, and you said that Southington, and I don’t know if I’m even pronouncing that right, is in — OK, there we go. There we go. All right, see, this is why I need to get you on the pod, because otherwise I mess up simple things.
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Jay Dougherty: It’s Southern Vin. Yeah, there you go. It’s all good.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah, exactly.
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Stuart Winchester: From right down the street, he said, tell us about Southington and what it means to you. Southington.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so I’m one of those fortunate few to get, have the opportunity to run the actual ski area that I grew up at. You know, I’ve had a season’s pass here since I was probably seven, eight years old. You know, and then I worked, this was my first job was in the rental department here. So it means a lot to me and about something that’s got a great community connection.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Oh.
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Stuart Winchester: And did you… I noted that you’ve been general manager since 2014. That’s as far back as I could find your history online. Did you work there as a lifty in high school or anything? Was it your first job?
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Jay Dougherty: I did, yeah, so it was my first job, I worked in the rental department as a technician, um, and then I was going to college for elementary ed, um, didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and my parents were like, well, I gotta do something. So I’m like, yeah, alright, you know, there’s a shortage of.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: male, young elementary school teacher. So I’m like, that sounds like a great opportunity. But I was working here and got offered a year-round position painting lifts. And I fell in love with it at that point. And then I found a college program that was just starting out with Green Mountain College in connection with Killington.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Uh, and I ended up going there, and, you know, I graduated 2004, uh, worked for Killington for a very short while, and then came back here as Assistant Mountain Manager.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: So talk to us a little bit about who owns Mount Southington. There’s a really good, you know, New England Ski History, this site does a great job with the origin stories and there’s a little bit on your site about the doctor and his wife, Dr. Harold Richmond and his wife who started it.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
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Jay Dougherty: Oh.
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Stuart Winchester: I’m not sure who owns it now, but who do you report to?
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Jay Dougherty: Uh, this is the best story, because it’s actually the kin of all the original owners. So all of their kids own it, and now we’re starting to see actual, like, fourth generation, like…
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: Oh, really? Oh, cool.
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Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow.
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Jay Dougherty: starting to enjoy the ski area. You see all the little kids and the nephews, cousins. So, uh, there’s actually probably about 25, um, actual owners, um, but we’re very organized down to, like, the board of directors that I answer to, that is comprised of those owners.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: So are they still mostly local folks then?
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Jay Dougherty: No, not at all. Everybody’s spread out, uh, basically worldwide at this point.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay.
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Stuart Winchester: All over.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: You know, I… maybe you’re not able to speak for them on this, but I’ll ask, because I’m seeing…
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Jay Dougherty: Hmm?
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Stuart Winchester: Family-owned ski areas all over the country. Go through a sort of, uh…
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Stuart Winchester: ownership existential crisis where maybe the parents were really into it, or the grandparents, or even the grandkids, but then along comes a generation that maybe just doesn’t have an interest in running a ski area. You know, that’s how Vail ends up with a lot of its ski areas. They just, they were family owned, and they get.
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Jay Dougherty: Yep.
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Stuart Winchester: rolled over. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying that it’s a model that is uniquely challenged by, you know, generational transition. What’s your sense from Southington and the owners that you work with that.
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Stuart Winchester: They would like to keep this, as it is, a community ski area owned by families for, you know, the foreseeable future, or not.
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Jay Dougherty: So what I can say is that they’re great at advocating themselves, like the board of directors that advocates amongst the ownership group for involvement. Um, subcommittees, um, and obviously we always promote to them, like, you know, take advantage of this great opportunity that, like, your grandparents, again, or great-grandparents.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Ah, set you up for it. I mean, there’s a lot of, um.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
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Jay Dougherty: There’s a lot of benefits to owning a portion of a ski area and being involved with it.
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Stuart Winchester: So as it is, it’s had all this time to…
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Stuart Winchester: grow under the original owners, and I imagine it gives it a really cool character, and I want to talk about some of the character things in a minute, but can you tell us, and this is going to sound like a dumb question, Jay, but.
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Stuart Winchester: I think you’re uniquely qualified to answer it, having grown up down the road. What is Mount Southington? And what I mean by that is you look in New England, there’s a hundred ski areas, right? And you don’t have to go very far north to get to some really big ski areas, some really nice ski areas, you know, Mount Snow, maybe the first one north if you’re going.
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Jay Dougherty: Yes.
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Stuart Winchester: And…
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Stuart Winchester: I think a lot of folks kind of look at skiing as, like, up and out. You know, I conquered Southington, so I don’t have any reason to go back there, and I talk to people all.
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Stuart Winchester: who live in New Jersey, and I’m like, do you have a Mountain Creek Pass? They’re like, no, why.
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Stuart Winchester: Right, it’s not, you know, Jackson Hole, but it has 1,000 vertical feet and high-speed lifts. Now, Slingson’s a different thing, but you have pretty new infrastructure. So, what do you think…
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Stuart Winchester: Southington is. Is it just a place for the kids? Do you try to make it nice for that? I know every skier has got that, uh, crew of dudes who are, like, 75 and then boot up every morning in the lodge. I think that’s a Northeast thing. So, so what is Southington to you, and, and.
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Jay Dougherty: Yep.
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Stuart Winchester: What’s your kind of core audience you focus on?
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah. So we’re we’re really the feeder, right? And and one of the things that we really strive to do, especially over the last decade. So my tenure as general manager is try to create pathways to keep everybody engaged a lot of times. What you’d find is you get that kid that gets to middle school, and they kind of like fall off, and they’re no longer interested. So like.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Jay Dougherty: What we’ve tried to do is create pathways for those interested in terrain parks. We’ve introduced like an intro to free ride or freestyle for those interested in alpine racing. There’s intro programs for that. We have weekend.
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Jay Dougherty: snow sports, school programs like our wild things and all of those type of things. So really, what we focus on are the kids, but also families. I think it’s a great family atmosphere. If I had to like, we do a lot of things, and we do a lot of things pretty well. I mean, we go everywhere from like high school racing.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Um, we’re the home of Connecticut’s high school, like, at least the public school leagues. Uh, we have adult night racing, um, and then, like, we host USASA events, uh.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: So it’s it’s it’s a lot and it’s a really orchestrated operation.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Jay Dougherty: You gotta be, you know, sometimes, uh, you can almost think of it as, like, being a maestro, trying to keep everything moving, and…
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Jay Dougherty: So it’s not stepping on something else, you know, because we we really do change, and that that could happen in one day. The demographic completely shifts from yesterday. 75 plus crew that’s here during the day. You hit 3 o’clock and the buses start unloading, and it’s just.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: crazy here. And then, at the same time, um, we’re really unique in, like, our seasons past. Like, most of the visits that come from our seasons past, those folks live within, like.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: probably a 15-mile radius of the mountain. So after school, all of those teenagers are getting dropped off here. Uh, so it’s… it’s… it’s unique, um, in that sense. And then 8 o’clock, it’s night racing.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: Right.
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Jay Dougherty: So.
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Stuart Winchester: So I’ve pulled up your trail map here, for those who are watching this on StormSkiing.com or YouTube, and the Connecticut ski areas, all four of them that are public, they remind me of Midwest ski areas, and that’s… I say that because that’s where I grew up, and Midwest ski areas are very.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: efficient, right? They have the racing lane and the terrain park, and what I really liked, I thought was impressive when I came to Southington, was you had a little mogul patch, maybe it was right here when I came.
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Stuart Winchester: This seemed to be the race hill. Wasn’t much going on the day I was there, but that’s neither here nor there. That’s what I was assuming that was for. And there’s some really nice park stuff.
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Stuart Winchester: I don’t know, just… I mean, you can see it on the trail map where it’s marked, but… but it’s… it’s, like, thought.
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Stuart Winchester: to, you know, give variety and make a small place.
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Stuart Winchester: feel bigger. I also like how you haven’t widened the trails too much up top. So, just talk a little bit about that, you know, efficiency of use, and how challenging it is to make a mountain for everyone.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah, it is a challenge, especially when you’re only dealing with like 51 acres, right? A skiable terrain. But you, you know, we want our programs to be successful. We want everybody to have a good time. We’re fortunate in that, like our lift capacity somewhat matches our parking capacity.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: So, like, people see the lots fall. Connecticut’s a small state, so, like, if we’re full, it’s very accessible to go somewhere else. Not that we’re encouraging that, but we don’t want to… we don’t want to overcrowd our trails, right? And yes, I admittedly catch flack, because when you do run high school racing in the afternoons, oftentimes you have to close down that.
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Stuart Winchester: Down.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Thunderbolt Trail in its entirety. There’s sometimes four GS lanes that are set up across it during training and race days.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Um, but you… you try to do a good job at everything you’re gonna offer. Um, so, you know, oftentimes, we… we get questions about things like tubing, right? Like, why… why don’t you have tubing, right? So…
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Jay Dougherty: unless I can do a really good job at it, um, which our acres just doesn’t allow for right now, and our parking capacity, like, it’s… it just doesn’t make sense to do it, because I don’t want to…
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Jay Dougherty: offer, like, a poor product, a poor on-snow product, so… Um, but yeah, it’s, uh, it is a big challenge, uh, for sure, especially when you’re…
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Jay Dougherty: you know again, going back to that demographic shift like on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and you have all these lessons that are out there, and they’re all fighting for beginner terrain. Yeah, it’s a it’s a challenge.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and for folks who may be wondering why…
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Stuart Winchester: Southington doesn’t put in more. Here is Southington on the map, right? This is a Google map, and you can see neighborhood. You have development all around you, and I think… what is this, like a nature preserve in the back?
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Jay Dougherty: No.
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Jay Dougherty: Uh, so that’s actually Southington Water Department, so yeah, there’s no… there’s no expansion that’s gonna happen back there, yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: Right.
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Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
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Stuart Winchester: Right.
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Stuart Winchester: Right, and if you really zoom in, I mean, some of these houses, they probably have ski-in, ski-out if they want it. I.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah, they’re really good. Some do, actually.
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Stuart Winchester: I don’t know if they do.
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Stuart Winchester: But you have this, uh, it’s a really unique location, and it feels very New England, because you, you get off the highway, you get off 84, and you’re driving through these neighborhoods, you’re like, where is this, is there really a ski area here? You know, I’m just blindly following my Google Maps like everyone else, and you pull up, and there’s this.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: barn. And I was reading a little bit about the history of it, but I’ll let you tell us, what is this barn, and what can you tell us about the history of Southington as far as how you crammed a ski area.
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Jay Dougherty: Yep.
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Stuart Winchester: Or how a scary is crammed into a neighborhood that probably wants a neighborhood.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so, the story goes, as you can read on the website, uh, Dr. Harold Richmond took his family on a ski trip up north, uh, I’m assuming it was probably Mount Snow, and, uh, I wanted to recreate that in Connecticut. I mean, there were already existing areas in Connecticut, obviously Mohawk was around, um, it was Satan Ridge at the time.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: So he came back and was looking for a spot. Initially, I think he wanted to open a skating rink in the town of Southington, and that got like shot down by the planning zoning at the time. So this farm was up for sale on the west side of town.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: At that time period, all of those houses weren’t there. There were some, but not nearly the messages there on the map.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: And, you know, he purchased the farm. Uh, he was an orthodontist, which…
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Jay Dougherty: typically doesn’t blend well with construction, uh, at least, uh, on-hill construction. Uh, so they partnered with Palmisano Construction out of Bristol, and they built out the ski area. Uh, in 1964, it opened, so…
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Been going ever since.
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Stuart Winchester: And then the barn, I understand that this property, I think, was assembled from a lot of things, but part of it was actually a dairy farm, right?
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
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Jay Dougherty: Yep.
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Jay Dougherty: Yep.
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Jay Dougherty: So, yeah, so, yes, I have, uh, actual photos of, um, cows being milked in that barn, uh, by the original owners, uh, which one of the original owners, actually, the family still lives in an adjacent property, so…
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Stuart Winchester: Really?
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: Do you have any idea how old the barn is?
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Jay Dougherty: Uh, roughly, I think there’s a stamp on the side, it’s like 1937.
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Stuart Winchester: Okay, so have you, you know, I imagine a lot of renovations have happened over the years. Do they have to winterize it? Did they, like, what do you, what does it take to maintain a building that’s this old? Because it looks super cool, but one other thing I know about old buildings by living in a bunch of them is they’re a pain in the butt.
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Jay Dougherty: Yes.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
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Jay Dougherty: Yeah, yeah, it’s a challenge. It certainly is. You know, they’re not the most efficient structures and like, especially when you’re striving for sustainability these days and trying to reduce your carbon footprint and an older facility like that.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
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Jay Dougherty: you know it. It’s it is oftentimes drafty. But there there is that like quaint New England feeling to it when you walk in. Certainly, if it were much larger, it would. It would better service the folks visiting here. But we also have the mountain room, which is a second restaurant.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Stuart Winchester: Right.
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Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
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Jay Dougherty: Um…
00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:51.000
Jay Dougherty: and lounge area. So, you know, we do a good job of spreading folks out, and.
00:16:51.000 --> 00:17:01.000
Jay Dougherty: you know, in the post-COVID era, people seem to not be as afraid to eat outside anymore. So, like, we’ve taken full advantage of, like, patio space and things like that.
00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay. Yeah.
00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:06.000
Stuart Winchester: That’s cool, and then the old original farmhouse, I believe, is your ticket office, is that right?
00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:10.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep. Yeah, I’m sitting in it right now. My office is in there, guest service office, everything like that.
00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:08.000
Stuart Winchester: But.
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:26.000
Stuart Winchester: That is so cool. So another quirk of Southington and Southington, and you, you find this only, well, I’m sure you find it elsewhere, but I’ve only seen it in the northeast, is the parking lot across the street. And so I know you have overflow parking here, but I always think it’s kind of neat, but also kind of.
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:21.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:36.000
Stuart Winchester: scary, considering your demo of kids. I mean, how much of a pain is this? Is this, like, the apple orchards where… because I came on a non-busy day, like I usually do these places, and uh…
00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:29.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:35.000
Jay Dougherty: Mm-hmm.
00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:44.000
Stuart Winchester: you know, like, I know the apple orchards in the fall have to set up a cop to safely get people across the road. What’s the… what’s the safety situation here?
00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:50.000
Jay Dougherty: So the states provided us with a great, like, crosswalk there of solar power.
00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:56.000
Jay Dougherty: It’s not… Mount Vernon Road, unless the traffic’s coming here, is not typically that busy.
00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:01.000
Jay Dougherty: It’s not one of the main, like, thoroughfares in Southampton by any means.
00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:18.000
Jay Dougherty: And for the most part, yes, occasionally you get the rogue driver that’s doing over the speed limit, and you do encounter a scary situation. But knock on wood, I mean, for the most part, it’s function. People know we’re here. Certainly anybody in town knows we’re here.
00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:13.000
Stuart Winchester: No.
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:30.000
Jay Dougherty: So, it really hasn’t been quite that big of an issue. It’s well-lit, like, you know, at night, the skier would glow.
00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:40.000
Jay Dougherty: as, you know, we put it, it’s there. I mean, you know, it hasn’t been a huge issue, but it is unique to, you know, New England skiers. You really don’t see it anywhere else.
00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so, so when I, when I see all these houses, you know, I made the crack that they might have ski in, ski out, and that’s my brain going to, I would love to live on the side of a ski area. Uh, not everyone necessarily does. I was talking to the folks over at Thunder Ridge last week up at, uh, the Ski Areas of New York convention.
00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:49.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:12.000
Stuart Winchester: And they’re similarly built, kind of, aside a neighborhood. But, you know, the ski area’s been there longer than most people live there. They said they’ve been having some issues with neighbors. I don’t know how Southington sits with its neighbors, or if this is a blessing or curse to have these homes right here.
00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:00.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:32.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, obviously, the ski area itself, before a lot of those homes, especially ones that are trailside, um, you know, the ski area existed. Uh, early on, yeah, there were certainly issues. I mean, they were running, and I don’t know if you’re familiar with, like, snowmaking equipment, but, like, Radnik’s, like, Sky Giant 2, or.
00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:20.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:23.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:49.000
Jay Dougherty: snow giant tubes, which were loud, sounded like a jet engine taking off. They were running compressors. They used to pump air into mines in Pennsylvania, like, very much a smaller version of what Hunter had going on a few years ago. And, like, it would, you know, thump and…
00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:35.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:19:49.000 --> 00:20:04.000
Jay Dougherty: shaking foundations. We’ve since modernized a lot of our equipment. We’ve gone to mostly fan technology, and it’s quieted down quite a bit, but it was such an issue back then. The town recognized how important the steering was.
00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:57.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:16.000
Jay Dougherty: you know, to tax revenue. We bring a lot of skier visits in. Um, you know, I think about this here, it’s like a ton of volume on small acreage. So, you know.
00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:07.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:26.000
Jay Dougherty: They actually worked with my predecessor, and it’s actually in the town ordinance that we’re exempt from the noise at night.
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:30.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, yeah, so…
00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:37.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I have to imagine, too, that as your equipment has gotten more efficient, I’ve seen a lot of skiers, their snowmaking window has really shrunk.
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:37.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:55.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, that’s absolutely us. Um, we have a really difficult climate where we are. You know, it’s somewhat coastal. Uh, we deal with Long Island Sound, you’re close to the Connecticut River. Um, you know, we always talk about that I-84 corridor in Connecticut before, like the snow line versus rain line, and um…
00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:43.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:20:55.000 --> 00:21:10.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, it is a challenge year after year. So, like, staying on top of ZoomMate, that’s probably one of our largest investments that we do. We put our new pump house in, fully automated in 2018, and now we’ve been, every year, just adding more automation to the hill.
00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:03.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:16.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, this year we added another, like, 10 TL8 Lances from TechnoAlpin, um…
00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:12.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:16.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:22.000
Jay Dougherty: and yeah, I mean, it’s the way to go, uh, because our winters are so short, like…
00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:20.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:23.000
Jay Dougherty: Oh.
00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:37.000
Jay Dougherty: like, manual snowmaking equipment, like, you’ll never be able to keep up with a computer as far as, like, changes in the atmosphere and conditions, so it’s worked really well for us. And it’s manageable because we’re small, you know, like, we can bite off small investments at a time with it.
00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I try to make that point to my listeners and readers a lot, is that…
00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:51.000
Stuart Winchester: I was certainly surprised by this when I started this podcast, is sometimes the smallest ski areas have the best snowmaking, and I always point to Pennsylvania, they are just…
00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:50.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:21:51.000 --> 00:22:03.000
Stuart Winchester: have some incredible snowmaking systems, because they have very challenging weather patterns, and that rain-snow line you’re talking about, a lot of times, folks who are in the Northeast, our weather goes sort of up at an angle.
00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:05.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, yeah.
00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:14.000
Stuart Winchester: So… so it comes from wherever it comes from, and then goes… so there’s sometimes this fun little rain-snow line that… that sometimes you’re below, but sometimes you’re above, right?
00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:31.000
Jay Dougherty: Right, and you have to be able to recover quickly, and that’s what it’s all about. I mean, like, typically after you get, like, one of those events, um, you do have usually some colder weather that’ll follow in, and you have to take full advantage of that, and you want to be able to resurface as much terrain as possible, so…
00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm. And are you feeding from this… this pond down here?
00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:44.000
Jay Dougherty: Yes, but we also have a, uh, water supply from the town. The town owns their own water here, so yeah. And we pay for it, um, but that’s another expense item.
00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh.
00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, that’s great.
00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:58.000
Stuart Winchester: So, snowmaking’s big. Another thing that Southington has really been investing in is lifts, and you’re… you have one of the newer lift fleets that I’m aware of for a small ski area, and uh…
00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:45.000
Jay Dougherty: I don’t know how.
00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:04.000
Stuart Winchester: Let me just pull up my notes here so I get this correct. But the…
00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:15.000
Stuart Winchester: So you put in North Star just three years ago, right, or two years ago, or 2023. Avalanche was new in 2021, I think.
00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Thunderbolt was new in, like, 2011, is that right?
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.000
Jay Dougherty: Uh, 2009 for Thunderbolt.
00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, 2009. Right, and so, uh, before I ask you about these lists individually, I was up at, again, I was at Skiers in New York last year, or last week, and one of the big concerns with these guys, because New York has the most Skiers, but it’s mostly family owned.
00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:40.000
Stuart Winchester: And one of their big concerns is just the cost of new lifts. All your lifts are ParTech lifts.
00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:41.000
Jay Dougherty: Correct.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:42.000
Stuart Winchester: And I’ve talked to Hagen, and…
00:23:42.000 --> 00:24:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Small operators, especially in the Northeast, or actually whoever’s worked with them, speak very reverently of Hagen and how if he wasn’t around, it would be very hard to afford new lifts. So can you just talk about working with Hagen on these lifts? And I realize, Thunderbolt, you were not in the GM role at that time, but it sounds like you were on site.
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:01.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:09.000
Stuart Winchester: So just talk about Hagen and what it’s like to work with him and how important he is to small ski areas in the 2020s.
00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:15.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so Hagen… Hagen’s great. I mean, like, I have a long-standing relationship with Hagen, and…
00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:12.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:31.000
Jay Dougherty: he’s the guy that you can call on, like, Sunday morning, and, like, if you need him to take a ride here to look at something, he will. Um, stands behind his product, always fix it, you know, he’ll work with you. He’s a solutions guy, really, um, is what it boils down to. And I feel like, um.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:23.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:28.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:35.000
Jay Dougherty: you know, when it comes to Hagen, like…
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:41.000
Jay Dougherty: He’s willing to work more with you than… than…
00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:56.000
Jay Dougherty: I don’t have much experience working with the other manufacturers, because really, like, I’ve only really considered that, because, I mean, one of the important things for me is to try to standardize everything here. It makes it easier on my crew, it makes it easier on what we have to stock for lift parts.
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:12.000
Jay Dougherty: and all of the above. Um, so, like, every one of our lifts now has the same grip in it, you know, assemblies are all similar, except for one lift, which we’ll talk about, I’m sure. Um, but yeah, I mean, I have nothing but good things to say about Hagen, and he’s.
00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:03.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.000
Jay Dougherty: incredibly important to this, and you say you’re from the Midwest, so, like…
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:33.000
Jay Dougherty: that’s where I think you know where where you don’t have you know that the lift ticket pricing in general in the Midwest is a bit lower than it is in the northeast, but we all spend have to spend the same amount of money on upgrading our facilities like it’s not like there’s a.
00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:26.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:42.000
Jay Dougherty: a discount for buying techno alpine equipment if you live in the Midwest, or you’re here in the Midwest, or buying, you know, chairlifts. So…
00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:51.000
Jay Dougherty: um, yeah, it’s a concern, and guys like Hagen are the… are… what can keep that alive, and come up with the solutions, um, for the future. I mean, like…
00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:59.000
Jay Dougherty: it, for us, it just makes sense, too. Pine Island, New York’s not that far from Southern, like, it’s an hour and a half, maybe.
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Right. How worried are you about Hagen retiring and what’s going to happen after that?
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:00.000
Jay Dougherty: So.
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:07.000
Jay Dougherty: Um…
00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:09.000
Jay Dougherty: I mean…
00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:22.000
Jay Dougherty: as with most lift manufacturers, somebody inevitably takes it over and takes care of it, but very concerned. I mean, the loss of, like, Hagen in the industry, if and when he decides to retire.
00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:36.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, it’s gonna be huge for… for the areas that it relied on. There’s a ton of part-tech lifts in the Northeast, and you find them at small areas like Mount Southington, and then private clubs, and things like that, and he’s still servicing all the old boardwreck equipment.
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:47.000
Jay Dougherty: Which I know, like, many people have had issues with Borbug in the past, but truth be told, I mean, there’s a number of those installations that are still running from the mid-70s, so…
00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:26:47.000 --> 00:27:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and one of them is right here. The Stardust, which according to LiftBlog is a 1978 Borvig triple. So you have one, two, three new lifts. Well, I’m going to say they’re, you know, anything built in this century, I call it new. And then you have this guy here. What’s your thinking on Stardust long term? Are you happy with it? Do you like it? Do you want to replace it?
00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:51.000
Jay Dougherty: Exactly. Yeah.
00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:10.000
Stuart Winchester: What’s popping around?
00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:26.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so, speaking of Hagen, we’ve been working with Hagen, and actually, the new, uh, idler return terminal is actually sitting on site right now, and that’s getting replaced. So, we’re somewhat redesigning the unload of that area, we’re moving it downhill, gaining a little bit of elevation for now, and it’s part of, uh.
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:35.000
Jay Dougherty: pretty much a three-year, uh, as of right now, it’s planned for three years. It could be a shortage, too. Um, planned full replacement of that list.
00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay, so, so, so you’re, you’re getting a new…
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:36.000
Jay Dougherty: So.
00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:44.000
Stuart Winchester: So you’ll get a new top terminal, then a new… I mean, I guess just take us through the timeline that you plan.
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:41.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:27:44.000 --> 00:28:04.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so it’d be a new top terminal first year, probably a new bottom terminal the second and then towers in between the third. So unique to board big lifts, they have the hanging ship assemblies, right? So that changes, you know, the dynamic of your of your carrier, right? So you have a shorter with those hanging ship assemblies, you have a shorter hanger.
00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:47.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:53.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think so.
00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:14.000
Jay Dougherty: attached to your chair. Um, so for me to do… I couldn’t do the towers before I did the terminals, but I could do the terminals before the towers.
00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay, so that’s essentially going to be a brand new Partech lift.
00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:22.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, essentially. I mean, there’ll be huge components in it. Um, the gearbox is…
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:19.000
Stuart Winchester: The the.
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:29.000
Jay Dougherty: We’re in great shape still, so I think that would probably get repurposed into the lift, so… but other than that, yeah.
00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:43.000
Stuart Winchester: That’s an interesting strategy, uh, Lonnie Gleiberman, who runs Ischeria Mount Bohemia up in northern Michigan, he had some old riblets, and he replaced the top terminal and bottom terminal with SkyTrak terminals, and just left all the chairs and, uh…
00:28:43.000 --> 00:28:51.000
Stuart Winchester: towers in place, because he said it was going to be another couple million dollars to do those, and he said I could just build another lift for that. Talk to us about the 3-year…
00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:58.000
Stuart Winchester: construction? Is that just a money thing? Is that a labor availability thing? What makes you spread it over 3 years?
00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:13.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, we do a lot in-house, right? I have a very talented team. Most of these guys, they’re 10 years or 10 plus years. I mean, we’ve been working together for a long time, so we know our abilities, we know our timelines, we know what we can fit in. Um, and me coming from the operation end, I know what’s, like, feas.
00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so. Yeah.
00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:14.000
Jay Dougherty: So…
00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:30.000
Jay Dougherty: you know, we… when we… when we plan these things, yeah, there’s a financial component, because, like, just maintaining a ski area like this takes a lot, but we also have a lot of summer activity that goes on here. Last fiscal year, I think we did 39 weddings. Um, we have a summer camp.
00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:23.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:43.000
Jay Dougherty: for 9 or 10 weeks that operates out of here. Uh, and then midweek, we have sand volleyball and cornhole leagues, so there’s always something going on. Oftentimes, we’re busier in the summer than we are during the winter.
00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Really.
00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:51.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, but that’s all part of the sustainability strategy for the skier, you know, you want to be able to absorb those, those bad years.
00:29:51.000 --> 00:30:05.000
Jay Dougherty: But, with all that activity, um, you know, construction periods get into smaller and smaller, uh, time frames, you know? You can’t be running site trucks by, uh, summer camp, you know what I mean? So…
00:29:51.000 --> 00:29:53.000
Stuart Winchester: That’s it.
00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:07.000
Stuart Winchester: And do you guys self-install?
00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:13.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, we assist with installation, like, obviously, um, but, I mean…
00:30:09.000 --> 00:30:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:18.000
Jay Dougherty: I’ll hire somebody to put the towers in, I’ll, you know…
00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, no, I know it’s rare. The reason I ask…
00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:26.000
Jay Dougherty: We’re very actively involved in installation, I’ll say that. It’s local concrete work, uh, local site work. It’s not, like.
00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:25.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:33.000
Jay Dougherty: that, you know, Ropeway Construction’s helped us a ton. Randy Glennis has been a great partner of ours, so, yeah.
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Yes.
00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, most people don’t. The only reason I ask is I have Dennis Eschbach from Holiday Valley coming on later today, and he’s one of the few that has an in-house team that just, they drop the lift off and they put it up. It’s kind of amazing. So, you know, you said you were sticking, you know, you had a good gearbox and.
00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:45.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:53.000
Stuart Winchester: Assuming that you’re just gonna have a, uh, replace Stardust with a triple, then?
00:30:52.000 --> 00:31:09.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, it’s going to be a trouble. It’s going to remain. In fact, the chairs will be repurposed. So those aren’t obviously the original boardwreck chairs that were on it. Those were flats, and they had issues with the chairs back in… that was probably about 2002. I think that was in College Way, and they replaced them with Partech.
00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:30:56.000 --> 00:30:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, okay.
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:10.000
Jay Dougherty: chairs at that time.
00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:25.000
Stuart Winchester: Right. So moving over to Avalanche, I don’t know if you followed a similar multi-year process with that, but interesting to me that you kept it as a double. We don’t build a lot of new doubles these days, just the ski industry in general. I mean, certainly like A-Basin built Pally.
00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:16.000
Jay Dougherty: We did.
00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:20.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:34.000
Stuart Winchester: a few years ago, replaced with a double. Was that the same kind of thing where you were modifying, or was there another reason why you went with a double chair instead of upgrading to that to maybe a triple or quad?
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:27.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:47.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, so there was a lot that went into that decision, right? So, 2010, I want to say, that terminal at the bottom was replaced. So, there was originally a haul lift there. Um, I think it was, like, a 75 horsepower haul double chair. Um…
00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:42.000
Stuart Winchester: Hmm.
00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:54.000
Jay Dougherty: And… you know, it had some issues in the lower terminal, so we knew we had to replace that, so we…
00:31:54.000 --> 00:32:11.000
Jay Dougherty: took the hall wheel at the time, had a new hub put into it, so it would fit on a gearbox, a, uh, Kistling gearbox, and we had Hagen build a terminal around… around that to service the hall, and we ran it for… well, right up until we did the… all the…
00:32:11.000 --> 00:32:23.000
Jay Dougherty: last replacement of it. When that lift went in, it was designed that it could be a triple, so Hagen offered, like, two types of terminals at the time, and one could accept both a triple and a double.
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:14.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:20.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:35.000
Jay Dougherty: Fast forward to 2011, and then time in between, ANSI standard changed. So your swing clearance has changed. Um, and that kind of brought in the issue of the lower terminal legs for us.
00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Umm.
00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:50.000
Jay Dougherty: And uh… so that was one of them. So I would have… if I wanted to change it to a triple at that point, it would have been a complete teardown of the lower terminal, new concrete, and a lot of… a lot of work that would go into that. Then you have the top, and if… I’m assuming you rode that lift when you’re here?
00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmm.
00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:58.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, Thunderbolt wasn’t running, but I rode the other ones. But this was actually before you replaced it, so I rode the old Avalanche.
00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:52.000
Jay Dougherty: Very tight.
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:55.000
Jay Dougherty: Yes.
00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:04.000
Jay Dougherty: Okay, okay. So, when you get off the avalanche double chair, right, it’s a really tight spot at the top.
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:05.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Oh, and suddenly that little hill, yeah.
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:18.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, yeah. Um, so… one of the things that we salvaged out of that was the original concrete off the top. We had everything, like, NDT’d and tested, and we dug down to the base of the footing and all nine yards. Um…
00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:33.000
Jay Dougherty: And I got to thinking, I’m like, alright, if we’re gonna, you know, add a little bit of uphill capacity, because the difference in all reality between a double and a triple is not… it’s not crazy, it’s not… you’re not getting 33% more people uphill.
00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:33:33.000 --> 00:33:34.000
Jay Dougherty: um…
00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:51.000
Jay Dougherty: it boiled down to, like, bang for the buck, and we accomplished this in a different way, and is this the ultimate, um, you know, top unloading for all of Mount Sinai? Can we try to stay, like, 5, 10 years ahead when we think about some of these things? And it’s like, well, we knew we had the Stardust triple up there, and.
00:33:47.000 --> 00:33:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:33:51.000 --> 00:34:16.000
Jay Dougherty: you know, that’s become more of the lift when we’re busy. Yes, the avalanche double runs during the day, because the easy to access lift for the you know, the older crowd that’s here skiing during the day. But anytime it’s busy, or there’s kids here. Family is adaptive programs. It’s mostly the starters triple. And really what you lose between the 2 lifts or lost before this year when we replaced doctor and all of.
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:23.000
Jay Dougherty: Stardust was probably 2, 3 acres of terrain. That’s yeah.
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:18.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:22.000
Stuart Winchester: Right. Okay.
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:24.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:28.000
Jay Dougherty: it wasn’t… it wasn’t that much. I mean, you can still access the primary terrain from the other way.
00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:36.000
Stuart Winchester: And so you have good reliability to the top. It sounds like you’re going to improve it. Well, you said start us starting this summer with that new terminal.
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:40.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, oh no, the terminal’s on site, there’s no chairs on the line right now, it’s in progress.
00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow.
00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, great. Uh, oh, wait, so will that be in place for 26-27 ski season?
00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:41.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:48.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, the top, the top of it, yeah. Just the top row, yeah.
00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay. Okay.
00:34:48.000 --> 00:35:02.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay, no, that’s awesome. Then, North Star is your most recent lift. So, this one’s interesting. You went from a double to a triple here. I think I know why, but just tell us about this lift and why you wanted to go triple over here.
00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:09.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, again, our big focus is on teaching people to ski and ride, and, um, you know, when you have… and we have a ton of kids here.
00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:29.000
Jay Dougherty: So, uh, a double chair really didn’t make sense, like, it was, you know, for a, um, instructor to ride with only one student. Uh, or a lot of times you’ll get families, and the parents want to teach their kids how to ski, and you’ll get one parent that skis, and another that sits in the base lodge, and they’ve got two children with them, so…
00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:19.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:31.000
Jay Dougherty: You know, triple makes more sense there.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:35:31.000 --> 00:35:47.000
Jay Dougherty: Absolutely. So that that was the primary driver of changing that to a triple, and that lift was put in. You know the lift that that replaced was a salvage lift from Craigmere in New Jersey.
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:35:47.000 --> 00:36:00.000
Jay Dougherty: Uh, many years ago, uh, which I was part of taking down. Um, yeah, so, like, steel has an age, and I’m gonna be the first one to tell you that. So that was one of the decisions of, like, where we’re, like, you know, let’s just get it and replace this.
00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Were you really?
00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:56.000
Stuart Winchester: Yes.
00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:01.000
Jay Dougherty: So.
00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:12.000
Stuart Winchester: That’s wild. So that lift is, from what I can tell, it was installed in 76 at Cregmer, and then you guys put it in, I think, 01.
00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:13.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:20.000
Stuart Winchester: And then when you took it down, Lost Valley, Maine took it, and they made it their chair 3, and I rode that chair last year, and I was like…
00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:25.000
Stuart Winchester: Hey, is this the one they moved from Southington? Because this is… they did a really good job with it, but…
00:36:23.000 --> 00:36:25.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:30.000
Stuart Winchester: how did that whole deal happen? Were you like, dude, you’re crazy, this chairlift is, like, 50 years old?
00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:39.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, I mean, so, Scott’s very talented, right? And, like, you know, his, um…
00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:36.000
Stuart Winchester: There.
00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:54.000
Jay Dougherty: he knows everything there is to know about all grips, and he has access to a lot of parts, so… I mean, for him, it worked. Uh, for us, you know, like, with the volume of people that we do, and what our challenge was with that lift.
00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:45.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:36:54.000 --> 00:37:07.000
Jay Dougherty: you know, I would say more of it into the functionality of the lift was the… was the reason for the replacement than the age. Yes, steel does have an age, like I said, but I mean, I think for me, it was more, you know.
00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:14.000
Jay Dougherty: we need this because of the volume of lessons we’re doing, and, like, the pinch point it’s causing with instructors, so…
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:20.000
Stuart Winchester: Right. Yeah, you know, one of the arguments I hear from the larger operators.
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:26.000
Stuart Winchester: for the reason that they don’t sell older lifts, they’re worried about liability. You know.
00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:30.000
Stuart Winchester: I find that dubious. Was that a consideration when you…
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:31.000
Stuart Winchester: Sold.
00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:33.000
Stuart Winchester: To… to Lost Valley?
00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:42.000
Jay Dougherty: No, I… you know, when you’re… when you write up paperwork, you can write it up as you’re selling it for scrap, and I don’t care what they’re doing with it afterwards.
00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:38.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:57.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, right, right, yeah. And they have other halls up there, and there’s still a couple hundred halls running in the country. So, but it was probably good, nice for you to get rid of the last one you had. I’m curious about Snowflake, this little, I think this is the handle toe, and then you have the carpets over here.
00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:02.000
Stuart Winchester: Do you like the handle toes still here, or are you gonna move to a carpet? What’s your thinking around there?
00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:19.000
Jay Dougherty: So, Snowflake is actually a, uh, it was a conveyor lift, um, that was there. The handle tow that we had is over on Whoopi, and that’s since gone. Uh, that’s moved its way out west to tubing operation this summer. Um, and the conveyor lift that was on Snowflake, our crews kind of, uh.
00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:11.000
Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay.
00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:31.000
Jay Dougherty: redoing, and that conveyor is moving over to replace the Whoopie handle towel, and we have a new conveyor that arrived yesterday that’s, uh, replacing the snowflake, yeah.
00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:25.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.000
Stuart Winchester: Man, there’s a lot happening. So you’re gonna have, uh, four carpets.
00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:36.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, 4 conveyors, and then, yep.
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so that’s… look, this is all really impressive, and if I…
00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:59.000
Stuart Winchester: was looking at any skier area in the country, I think you probably have, top to bottom, one of the newer Lyft fleets, even including Stardust, right? And, you know, I cover skier areas all over the country, and a lot of times, there’s so much deferred maintenance, you get something like a Holiday Mountain in New York, where.
00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:50.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:38:59.000 --> 00:39:14.000
Stuart Winchester: Mike Taylor, I’m not sure if you’re acquainted with him, but he bought it, and it was just… it was a junker, and he had to do everything all at once. It sounds like Southington’s been able to keep up. And I asked this question, because I have a lot of people who listen to this who run skier areas or want to run skier areas. Is all this money.
00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:30.000
Stuart Winchester: to upgrade Southington coming from Southington, or is it… is there an outside business that helps feed in, or is it, hey, like, Patch Peak, the ski area, has to make a profit, even though the family owns a bunch of different ski areas. It’s, uh, you know, Patch Peak can’t take money from whatever their other businesses are.
00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:49.000
Jay Dougherty: Nope, it’s all from outside of it, honestly. And that’s, uh, you know, that’s the best part of it all, you know, like… And, you know, it’s having that strategy of how to continue operating under, like, all these outside pressures that we have. And, you know, we compete with everything.
00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:34.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:39:49.000 --> 00:39:52.000
Jay Dougherty: Compute with video to complete.
00:39:51.000 --> 00:39:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:39:52.000 --> 00:40:07.000
Jay Dougherty: everything that’s on the outside. We’re just very fortunate to have like that main artery that runs through Connecticut and I 84 makes us accessible. Honestly, that’s that’s one of the biggest drivers. So it’s helped us develop our after school programs.
00:39:59.000 --> 00:40:01.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:13.000
Jay Dougherty: It’s helped us become the home for, you know, the high school race leagues.
00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:19.000
Jay Dougherty: all of those things. And, like, New York City, like, I can be down in New York City in, like, 2 hours.
00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:29.000
Jay Dougherty: Yankee Stadium, whatever. And, uh, it… we get a lot of traffic from there. We get traffic from Long Island, we get traffic from Westchester County, Fairfield County.
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:36.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, you name it. So, like, just being accessible has been, like, the key to the success of it, really.
00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it really is. There’s not… There’s a lot of…
00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:54.000
Stuart Winchester: good ski areas that orbit New York City, that that’s their main purpose. I, you know, Mount Peter is our go-to for my son for his seasonal program. Thunder Ridge, another one I mentioned. Uh, and there’s Camp Gaughan, New Jersey. But then, the Connecticut ski areas, I think, are great, and they’re actually…
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:45.000
Jay Dougherty: that.
00:40:54.000 --> 00:41:01.000
Stuart Winchester: So, let’s… let’s wrap up on this today, Jay. You… last year, Southington joined the Snow Triple Play.
00:40:54.000 --> 00:40:56.000
Jay Dougherty: Yes.
00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:02.000
Jay Dougherty: Right.
00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:17.000
Stuart Winchester: And this year, you are on that product again, plus Snow Partners’ new Snow Pass, which has two days each at 16 ski areas. And just to lay this out a little bit for the listeners, the way that I see Southington feeding into this is it’s, you have Southington, you have Butternut.
00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:33.000
Stuart Winchester: Uh, and then you have Bel Air, Gore, Whiteface. So you kind of got those beginner ski areas where people can hop around and learn and then go up to the more aspirational ski areas, I’ll call them. But just talk about those passes and snow operating and why.
00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:40.000
Stuart Winchester: Because I imagine you could have joined IndyPass years ago, but why did you finally go with Snow Operating?
00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:52.000
Jay Dougherty: So, we’ve had a great relationship with Snow Operating. Obviously, we’re a little later in the ballgame with the attorney-based learning, um, but we’ve had such good success with them, and such a positive relationship with.
00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:44.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay.
00:41:49.000 --> 00:41:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Okay. Yeah.
00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:59.000
Jay Dougherty: with Joe and Hugh and that whole group, um, that it was kind of, like, the natural choice for us to go with them.
00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:00.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:13.000
Jay Dougherty: Um, last year, yeah, we were on the, uh, the Triple Play, which was kind of the product that came out of something they were doing at Mountain Creek for a number of years. And, you know, thinking about it, when you approached us with the idea, it was like, yeah, we’d love to attract new.
00:42:07.000 --> 00:42:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.
00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:19.000
Jay Dougherty: with folks, and, like, we share a similar demographic. Um, people go south to them, they come north to us.
00:42:19.000 --> 00:42:24.000
Jay Dougherty: out of the city, or… or actually, they go a little bit west. Um, but…
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:36.000
Jay Dougherty: it just made sense, you know? And we did see a value last year in bringing new people to Southington, and I’m sure they saw a value with people in our general area buying that pass to explore their mountains.
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:41.000
Jay Dougherty: And the same kind of goes for the past now, right?
00:42:41.000 --> 00:42:46.000
Jay Dougherty: Butternut is the natural progression, like you said.
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:46.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.
00:42:46.000 --> 00:43:04.000
Jay Dougherty: being from Connecticut and Southern Finland, I, like, have that true perspective on what the Connecticut skier explores, and growing up, and I can say this just in this general region, because I’ve lived it, like, we ski Vermont, right? Vermont, we ski New Hampshire, right? That’s it. New York’s not really a consideration. I think this is a great way.
00:42:58.000 --> 00:42:59.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.
00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:21.000
Jay Dougherty: to get people to explore. You know your belly, or your your core, your white face, whatever and and still butter, not being honest, butter. That’s also on the freedom pass with us as well. So like it. It’s it’s a great relationship. And you’re right, though, that is the natural progression. So.
00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:17.000
Stuart Winchester: Right.
00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:21.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:22.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah.
00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:32.000
Stuart Winchester: Do you… so the Freedom Pass is a little newer, and Lost Valley’s on that as well. Do the… I guess you’re okay with the free days. Do you consider it sort of like a…
00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:30.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:34.000
Stuart Winchester: New customer recruitment.
00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:52.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, in a way, it is. Um, but, you know, the industry as a whole, like, there’s a cool story, you know, sharing this whole, like, experience with everybody. Like, explore these small mountains, they’re unique in their own ways, like you said. Like, we haven’t cut many of our trails, our classic New England trails.
00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:36.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah.
00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:49.000
Stuart Winchester: Sure.
00:43:51.000 --> 00:43:52.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:43:52.000 --> 00:44:00.000
Jay Dougherty: Pico’s always been great for that, you know what I mean? Up north. So, like, keeping in a world of ski areas where.
00:43:54.000 --> 00:43:55.000
Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:17.000
Jay Dougherty: some of the larger corporations have tried to standardize the feeling of being at those ski areas and having the same experience across the board. You kind of lose the individuality that makes us all so special. So for for Mount Silo that I like, I.
00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Yep.
00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:31.000
Jay Dougherty: of course, I’d encourage people to go visit Lost Valley, go ride that chair that was here. Um, I think that’s good for the industry. I mean, it gives… shows people that there’s more than just your local hill, and there’s more than just the big, massive areas.
00:44:31.000 --> 00:44:32.000
Jay Dougherty: So.
00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:48.000
Stuart Winchester: Yeah. All right, Jay, I think we’ll leave it at that for today. I really appreciate you coming on The Storm and breaking down Southington for us and correcting my pronunciation, which I’ve been saying it wrong basically my entire life. But hey, I’m only a couple hours away. I’m in New York City, so hopefully I can come up, take a run with you sometime this winter.
00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:43.000
Jay Dougherty: No worries at all.
00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:44.000
Jay Dougherty: Yep.
00:44:48.000 --> 00:44:51.000
Jay Dougherty: Yeah, absolutely, I enjoy that. Thanks.
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:53.000
Stuart Winchester: All right. Thanks a lot, Jay. Take care. Have a great weekend.
00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.000
Stuart Winchester: All right, that was Jay Doherty.
00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:06.000
Stuart Winchester: Repping Connecticut, that was awesome. Alright, let’s wrap up here today with a little bit of…
00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:08.000
Stuart Winchester: Feedback…
00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:12.000
Stuart Winchester: And then, let’s see.
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:17.000
Stuart Winchester: My podcast with Doug Fish, which aired on.
00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:30.000
Stuart Winchester: On Wednesday, I say aired. I always say things like aired and tape. I don’t even know if my kids know what I’m talking about when I’m like, hey, did you tape that? I guess they did. I guess the word is translated even though we don’t use tape anymore. All right.
00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:41.000
Stuart Winchester: Commenting on the IndiePass episode, Mike Schulte says, love hearing from Doug Fish, he’s a marketing machine for the ski industry. I hope Snowvana can find a venue in Detroit or Cleveland, Ohio.
00:45:41.000 --> 00:45:56.000
Stuart Winchester: So it can get more Midwest exposure. I… believe me, I… look, man, I got the Michigan thing going here. I’m… I’ve been on Doug about Detroit. I think he… just has to find a venue. We’ll see. We’ll see. I don’t want to speak for Doug. Uh, but I can tell.
00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:15.000
Stuart Winchester: Jasu Branin says, sorry, tech challenged from… I relate. From Florida, coming to New York for New Year’s and taking a quick two-day trip to Whiteface to visit some buddies. Passing through the city from 1231 to 12, what was that New York boot fitter that you recommended or mentioned in a couple pods a long time ago?
00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:24.000
Stuart Winchester: I want to get new boots for my growing teens. Yeah, so the boot fitter that I like is up at Hunter Mountain.
00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:29.000
Stuart Winchester: And it’s not at Hunter Mountain, it’s in Hunter on your way to Hunter Mountain.
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Stuart Winchester: And let me make sure I get the.
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Stuart Winchester: The name exactly right here.
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:37.000
Stuart Winchester: So…
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Stuart Winchester: So should I?
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Stuart Winchester: Look this up before I.
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Stuart Winchester: Started on the pod, but it’s, uh… let’s see…
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Stuart Winchester: Alright, I’m gonna have to come back to you on the name of the ski shop, but I will… I will drop it into the comment when I find it. It’s… I’m really bad at remembering the names of things, which is why I sometimes don’t remember the names of lifts or trails, because I have so many floating around in my head, so…
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Stuart Winchester: Moving on here, Allison says, the pod helps me get through my post-lunch tiredness at work. The only issue now is that I want to go everywhere now. I guess I need to win the lottery. You know, Allison, uh, first of all, thank you for saying that. And, uh, and second, I’m sorry, I, I can’t.
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Stuart Winchester: uh, regularly put these out after lunch. The editing… the editing doesn’t take long, but the processing takes a while, we’re trying to speed that up. Uh, but, you don’t need to win the lottery to go everywhere, you just need to get a couple of passes, start with an IndiePass, get an IconBase or an Epic Local.
00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:50.000
Stuart Winchester: Actually, Mountain Collective and Indy go really well together. You get the big guys and the little ones. And then just kind of pot them up, you know? Plan a week where you can stay in one place and hit a bunch of ski areas. So, for example, if you had…
00:47:50.000 --> 00:48:06.000
Stuart Winchester: You know, an icon base in a, in an indie pass, you could set up shop in Northern Vermont off the interstate somewhere for a few days, and, and you could hit JP, you could hit Smugs, you could hit Walton Valley, you could hit Sugarbush, and you’d wanna buy a ticket for Mad River Glen anyway, because it’s.
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Stuart Winchester: So…
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Stuart Winchester: It’s just, uh, it’s planning, more than anything. More than, uh, more than cash.
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Stuart Winchester: Although it’s that, too. Noah H. Forrest says, loving the new format and the increased frequency of the podcast. Anytime we get to hear more from leaders like Doug Fish, John Schaefer, and Steve Wright, we are all winning. Thank you, Noah. I have not had Steve Wright on again recently.
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Stuart Winchester: again, it’s another guy that I talk to frequently, and I should have on the podcast more often. So, that’s gonna be our show. We will be back tomorrow with a podcast with a conversation with.
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Stuart Winchester: Holiday Valley.
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Stuart Winchester: General Manager and President.
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Stuart Winchester: Dennis Eshbaugh, who has been on the Storm before. Please go to stormskiing.com and subscribe to the Storm Skiing Newsletter.
00:48:53.000 --> 00:49:09.000
Stuart Winchester: You can start with the free tier and you can upgrade to a paid subscription, which is the best way to support the Storm Skiing Journal and podcast that will get you the ability to interact with this podcast by leaving a comment on the article on storm skiing.com, and it will also get you everything below the paywall.
00:49:09.000 --> 00:49:20.000
Stuart Winchester: in the written part than the written post, which is about 80% of what I put out traditionally. Kind of easing into the podcast right now, so frequency of that’s been a little less, but it will ramp back up.
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Stuart Winchester: You can also rep the storm with a shirt, a hoodie, a hat, a bunch of other stuff at stormskiing.myshopify.com.
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Stuart Winchester: You can follow The Storm on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok at Storm Ski Journal. We are trying to push out daily content there as well.
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Stuart Winchester: Until next time, stay well, stay safe. I’m Stuart Winchester, and I’ll talk to you again very soon.
