The Best Price on an Annual ‘Storm’ Subscription (+ Free Slopes) Ends Tonight
And some name-dropping with Twain and Shakespeare
Skiing is cool. If you’re reading this, you’re cool too. Because skiers are cool. I just kind of like this whole vibe.
I know it often seems as though I don’t like other skiers. With my poking at their Snow-Tires-As-Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom posturing and their reflexive [Fill in the Blank]-Is-Killing-Skiing certitudes. But that is posturing on my own part. It is cool that we all like this dumb thing that looks as though it spun from a Dr. Seuss book. And that we all have to do it No Matter What.
Today, I want to reassure you that I do, in fact, like other skiers, by resetting this post I wrote on my one-year anniversary of launching The Storm.
From The Storm Skiing Journal & Podcast, Oct. 13, 2020:
In 1883, Mark Twain dropped a little-remembered tome of miscellany and adventure called Life on the Mississippi. Romanticizing the vanished culture of pre-Civil War-era Mississippi River steamboat pilots, Twain wrote:
They were likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together, and as they talk only about the river they are always understood and are always interesting. Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.
It was to connect with people who knew skiing and ski areas as deeply as Twain’s pilots knew every sandbar and stream on the 1,000-mile stretch of the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans that I launched The Storm one year ago today.
I didn’t know if anyone would read it. I’d never worked in the ski media or industry and I didn’t know anyone who did or had. I’d never lived in a ski town. I’d spent the past two decades, instead, in New York City, a onetime ski media hub that the industry had decisively fled decades ago because, well, there is no skiing here.
I nearly quit the whole operation before I started. There was a moment last June when I had compiled a list of the general managers and CEOs and website founders and journalists whom I hoped to interview on the podcast. I had them sorted and prioritized and hypothetically scheduled in a notebook I had bought for that purpose.
And then I realized I had no way to contact any of them. And that they had no reason to respond if I did.
This whole thing, I thought, is idiotic. No one is going to talk to me.
Imagine it: you run the largest and most important ski area in the Northeast, and a guy you’ve never heard of cold emails you with an interview request for a yet-to-be-launched podcast. Why would Killington General Manager Mike Solimano say yes to that? But he did and that conversation became the first piece of content ever released under the banner of The Storm.
That email went to two people. One of them was my wife. But the list grew rapidly, first with the help of the Northeast Skiology Facebook group and New York Ski Blog, then organically. When Covid hit, subscriber numbers froze for three weeks, then tripled as The Storm pivoted from general-interest ski life to current events, to the pandemic and to diversity on the slopes and to the rapidly evolving season pass landscape.
Somewhere in there, The Storm became a real thing, cited in Powder and occasionally breaking news. Last month, Mountain Gazette signed on as the podcast’s first sponsor. In this strange year, there has been plenty to write and talk about. This one-year anniversary message is the 119th mailing from The Storm.
Just about every time I sent out an email, at least one of you replied. Sometimes you have thoughts or additional information to share. Sometimes you just want to chat about skiing. Sometimes you want to tell me I’m a dumbass. I try to answer every one. Often these turn into long exchanges. Why wouldn’t they? I have found the people who talk only about skiing, who care nothing about anything else on earth, who are always interesting because of it.
I’ve been surprised at how many @skiresort email addresses have subscribed; how many of you have written this Northeast-focused newsletter from the Midwest, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, California; how civil and thoughtful 99 percent of the emails have been. The Storm is a community, dispersed and walled off from the social media bar brawl but faster than the four-times-per-year magazine, where we can sit on wooden barrels smoking pipes and riffing on the issues of the day, a snowy digital approximation of Twain’s 19th century river hounds.
Unfortunately, we live in an era in which there is less quality writing about our sport than ever before, as the imminent closing of Powder tragically underscores. True, the social media vortex spins out an endless stream of content. Most of it is garbage. I hope I am making something that is not garbage. I hope it sates that hunger we all have for this thing that is seasonal and fleeting and invigorating and hard to understand by those who are not a part of it. I hope it is worth your time.
I often recall a college professor, citing a Shakespeare play I can’t remember, explaining to our class that time is the most valuable gift we can give. We all get the same amount. It is free but not infinite, though the things we may do with it are. To share that resource with someone is therefore a treasure beyond imagining.
So I extend, to each of you, a sincere thank-you for your time, for reading, for listening, for sharing, for writing back, for being part of this thing that could not exist without your willingness to share with me your one most precious resource, and to unite over the truly remarkable thing that is skiing.
And now back to the future that is March 29, 2025:
Because skiing is so cool, I’m going to keep talking about it all spring and all summer and all fall and basically as long as I’m around. If you want in on the full experience, today is your last chance to score the best rate:
A paid subscription unlocks all past paid content, and it locks in that rate forever. If you renew next year, you will keep your $55 price (the free Slopes is a one-year deal, however, with no renewal).
Thanks so much for your continued support of independent ski journalism.