Shaun Sutner| s_sutner@yahoo.com
While we’re still waiting for natural snow in New England (many ski areas are open with decent man-made snow), here are a few bits and pieces from my recent files ...
For some of the best and most humorous snow industry and sports feature reporting out there, check out Alex Kaufman’s “Wintry Mix” podcast series for Vermont Public Radio, and available streaming online on Soundcloud.
Kaufman is one of the most accomplished and quirkiest snow sports media people in the East. His resume includes stints as a pro freestyle skier, media relations guy for two or three big ski areas, and his ongoing gig as the media mastermind of Ski The East, the insanely successful apparel and gear brand that evolved from the former Meathead Productions film collective.
On “Wintry Mix,” Kaufman tackles topics ranging from a behind-the-scenes look at a Vermont snowplow operator to how to make snow in October at Wildcat Mountain in New Hampshire.
When I ran into Kaufman at the Snow Ski and Snowboard Expo in Boston in November, he was trying to balance work helping to set up the Ski The East booth while rushing around doing really funny unscripted interviews for a podcast episode about the popular consumer show as a vibrant snow business marketplace.
Worcester’s Polar Beverages and Shrewsbury’s Skichair.com make cameo appearances in the 18-minute podcast.
Here’s Kaufman’s response to my question about his main goal with the radio series: “To bring the listener behind the curtain of the snow economy in a way that’s listenable for the insider and the general public.”
Hitting slopes
I hit Mount Snow last Saturday for about five runs at the southern Vermont ski and snowboard magnet. It was my first day on Eastern snow this year. See my Vail column.
The machine-made snow was a fine loose granular, with good coverage, and while the ski area only had about three trails, or about 70 acres, open, it was top-to-bottom skiing, and that’s what counts.
The weather was sunny and beautiful, for May. Unfortunately, this was early December, when we’re supposed to have about 20 degrees colder temperatures.
“It’s like spring skiing,” my ski partner for the day said.
Despite the limited terrain, there were ample numbers of enthusiasts lined up in the corral at the Bluebird Express, Mount Snow’s speedy summit, six-passenger lift with the blue bubble cover.
Incidentally, Okemo Mountain, about an hour’s drive north in central Vermont, now has two bubble-covered chairlifts with the addition of the new high-speed Quantam four-passenger lift, which replaces the old un-bubbled Jackson Gore Express quad. The Quantam joins Okemo’s Northstar Express “sixpack,” which opened last year with heated seats. Both chairs sport orange bubbles.
At Mount Snow, home of what TransWorld Snowboarding and Ski Magazine have picked as the best terrain parks in the East, plenty of snow-starved young riders and skiers were tearing it up on this early December morning on a dozen or so features on the Gulch run at Carinthia Parks, the collection of freestyle playgrounds that traditionally draws big crowds every winter.
Respect for East
I also got a chance at the Boston expo to sit down with Tommy Moe, the legendary former U.S. Ski Team downhiller, who now is an ambassador for Wyoming’s equally legendary Jackson Hole ski area.
(Full disclosure: my brother, Adam, is Jackson Hole’s chief marketing officer.)
Moe is most famous for winning a gold medal in the downhill event and silver in the super giant slalom at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics in 1994. He competed in three Olympics and also holds five U.S. national Alpine ski racing titles.
The Montana native, who went to a ski academy in Alaska and runs a helicopter ski operation in the “Last Frontier” state, is 45 now, but still an unbelievably powerful free skier who can “stick” 50-foot jumps on command for Jackson Hole’s video crews.
After he retired from the Olympic and World Cup circuits, Moe starred in a bunch of ski movies with thrilling descents in Alaska and other big mountain settings.
While he was a high-speed specialist as a racer, Moe is charming and laid-back in person.
And although he epitomizes Western skiing, Moe spent plenty of his formative years racing in the East at places such as Sugarloaf in Maine, where he won a national downhill title in 1997, beating American superstar Bode Miller; Attitash in New Hampshire’s Mount Washington Valley, and Stowe, Vermont.
“I have a lot of respect for skiers in the East,” Moe told me. “In the West, we grow up with skiing a lifestyle. In the East, you have to make a big commitment to it.”
Calendar
Friday or Saturday — Wachusett Mountain, Princeton, plans to re-open.
Saturday— Waterville Valley, USASA Rail Jam.
Saturday — Loon Mountain, Lincoln, New Hampshire, Demo Day, free tryouts of ski and snowboard gear.
Saturday-Sunday — Wachusett Ski Area, Princeton, USSA Skillsquest youth ski racing development program. Call the Wachusett Ski School for more information.
Friday-Sunday — Stratton Mountain, Vermont, Women on SnoW Camp, open to women skiers ages 18 and over, beginner to advanced.
Dec. 19— Mount Snow, West Dover, Vermont, Demo Day.
—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.
