This Week In SeniorsSkiing.com (Jan. 4)
Holy Ticket Shock, Favorite Article of 2018, Belleayre, Ski Test Series, Flyin’ Mystery, Encore For Layering Basics, Sir Arnold Lunn.
There is a reason SeniorsSkiing.com tries to promote reasonable pricing for seniors who have been supporting the sport for decades.
News like the following is evidence that the voice of seniors is needed to get a lot louder in the corporate halls of the ski industry. The headline is from New England Ski Industry.com.
In case you can’t read it the graphic, it says “Stowe Sets New England Record With $147 Lift Ticket.” Read the whole story by clicking here. All of this is designed to push consumers to purchasing Epic season passes which may or may not be a good deal, depending on how often you ski and where you go.
This week’s Short Swings has an excellent summary of the lift ticket/season pass situation in a Ski History article by none other than John Fry, long time snow sports journalist and member of the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. If you’re a relatively infrequent skier—say five or six times a season—you’re going to be paying the highest ever ticket prices. If you are a frequent senior skier, you’re not going to get the big discounts you used to get at big resorts. Clearly, the multi-resort season pass is focused on the sport’s “best customers”, those who ski frequently and who often head to destination areas, but who represent only about 28% of the total skiers. Pareto Principle, 80-20 rule. Does this strategy make sense?
Favorite Article Of 2018: Free Skiing For Seniors
That is why many of our readers favor “mom and pop” areas, the archetypical ski resort that has low-key facilities, moderate terrain, and reasonable prices. In fact, many of these areas offer free or almost free skiing for seniors. And that is also why our annual listing of resorts that offer free or almost free skiing was the most read article of the year.
If you haven’t seen our directory of 145 ski resorts in the US and Canada that offers free or almost free skiing to seniors, click on the third menu box that reads Free Skiing For Seniors. You may be asked to re-enter your name and email address to access subscriber-only content.
This Week
We have a new resort review for Belleayre Mountain, a two-hour drive from the NY metropolitan area from Bob Nesoff, a veteran snow sport and travel journalist. Did you know Belleayre has a brand new gondola to whisk skiers up the slopes? A gondola in the Catskills!
Janet Franz reports on the basics of layering, based on a presentation by North Face’s Stan Kosmider at the recent Northeast Winter Weather Summit. There are nuances about what is worth wearing and why that we didn’t know. If you’re wearing the same old waffle long underwear that you’ve worn for years, you’ll want to think about how to re-dress.
Our Mystery Glimpse this week is a family affair. Should be quick recognition for those who live and play in a certain part of the country. ‘Nuff said. Check out the clue and read about last week’s amazing snowboard Olympic champ, Shannon Dunn-Downing.
Correspondent and long-ago SKI magazine associate editor Marc Liebman brings an introduction to his new ski test series that offers a history of how it was done ‘way back in the 70s. Remember, that was a time when the number of products proliferated, and readers needed a way to sort through and make decisions. Both Ski and SKIING magazines pioneered ski testing. Marc presents a capsule history.
Finally, Jan Brunvand offers a delightful selection from Sir Arnold Lunn’s The Mountains Of Youth (1925) from the early days of “ski-ing”. Lunn was the British athlete who set the rules for downhill racing, advancing the sport and attracting untold numbers of new skiers.
January is Learn To Ski and Snowboard Month. Bring a friend and get some discounts. Find out where and how by clicking here.
Happy New Year! Don’t wait, go out there and enjoy the winter. Tell your friends about us.
Remember there are more of us every day and we aren’t going away!
Short Swings!
John Fry
John Fry is an important thinker in the world of skiing. For many years he was editor-in-chief of SKI Magazine, and he was founding editor of Snow Country Magazine. He created Nastar and invented the Nations Cup of alpine ski racing by which the relative strengths of the world’s national ski teams are ranked annually. He was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1995. More recently, he authored the award-winning Story of Modern Skiing. John is the current Chairman of the International Skiing History Association, which publishes Skiing History Magazine.
The current issue of Skiing History features his article, The Impact of Soaring Season Pass Sales on Ski and Snowboard Participation Rates. If you are interested in the quickly evolving economics of skiing in the US, this article is not to be missed.
Among his many observations:
- Last season, ski area visits were down to the same level of 1987.
- Twenty-eight percent of all skiers/boarders account for 70 percent of all visits.
- Last season, the average U.S. window lift ticket price was $122.30, thirty times the average price of a weekend ticket ($4.18) in 1965. Before you say “Of course!,” consider that over the same 53 years, window lift ticket prices grew ten times faster than disposable income, which multiplied only 2.75 times.
- He talks about the decline of recent college grads entering the sport. Historically, they were a significant factor. Today, they’re struggling to pay student loans.
- He cites NSAA (National Ski Areas Association) research showing that 4 out of 5 newcomers exposed to skiing/boarding decide not to continue.
- And he discusses the bundled pass offerings from IKON, Epic, and others and asks if, despite their sales success, they serve the best interests of the sport.
Fry concludes, “The ski industry is not synonymous with the sport… The cross-country ski and freestyle crazes of the 1970s, and later snowboarding, which attracted hundreds of thousands of new participants, were not ski industry marketing programs designed to increase participation. They arose out of the sport’s heart, and in some cases the “industry” didn’t initially respond well to them.
“In the long run, the ski industry exists because of the sport, and not the other way around.”
Join Us in the Alps
Join us the week of March 10 when we ski in the Aosta Valley with guides from Alpskitour. Each day, we’ll go to a different resort in Italy, Switzerland and France. The all-inclusive price — $4500 to $5500 per person– depends on where you fly to and whether you stay in a 3 or 5 star hotel. Orsden is a sponsor and giving a parka to each participant. If interested, email me: jon@seniorsskiing.com.
Another Terrific Ski Cake
Iris and Victor with their 45th wedding anniversay cake
Iris and Victor Yipp of Oak Park, Illinois, sent in this photo of their 45thwedding anniversary cake from October 2016. Their note says “We wish we could ski as well as the skiers on the cake!” It is a beauty!!! Belated congrats. If you have a photo of a cake depicting skiers, boarders, snowshoers, or other snowsport fun, please send it along.
Free X-C at Cross Country Ski HQ in Roscommon, MI
Next week (Monday, 1/7 – Friday, 1/11) is Silver Streak Week at Cross Country Ski Headquarters in Roscommon, Michigan. If you are 60+, you’ll ski free and have the opportunity to demo new boots and skis at the demo center. Trails there are meticulously groomed, and few things are as pleasant as enjoying something yummy in front of the huge fieldstone fireplace.
Short Ski Videos Worth Watching
Most things Salomon makes are first-rate. Clothing looks good and wears well. Skis are exceptional. Even their videos. This one, titled “Higher Truths,” follows a few skiers on an unclimbed Tibetan peak. It’s the intermingling of the journey with Buddhist thinking that I find appealing. The video is a little over 11 minutes.
Many of you have had the pleasure of skiing Alta. I’ve been a regular there since 1973. This 2 ½ minute video showing a cat grooming at night is consistent with Alta’s lovely, low-key vibe.
Your Suggestions, Please
If you have topics you’d like explored in Short Swings!, please let me know. Alternatively, if you’d like to express your own interests on these paperless pages, we’re always open to article ideas and article submissions. They could be about your personal experience, your ski club activities, interesting skiers you know, etc., etc. Click here for submission guidelines.
SeniorsSkiing.com Fundraiser
In a few weeks, we’ll start our second annual fundraising campaign. The newly minted SeniorsSkiing cotton twill baseball cap is yours for a donation. It’s the best fitting cap I’ve worn…even makes me look good!
SeniorsSkiing Guide: Belleayre, A World Away…
…But Close Enough To Enjoy The Day.
The new Belleayre Gondola whisks skiers to the summit in comfort. This is part of the continuing upgrading of facilities at the mountain. Credit: Belleayre Mtn.
Folks living in and around major urban centers, with the exception of places such as Denver and Salt Lake City, often find it difficult to plan a ski day within an easy drive. And while the population is graying, more seniors are skiing that ever before. So the hunt for ski areas within easy driving distance becomes a chore.
Belleayre Mountain in Highmount, NY, off New York Throughway Exit 19 and about 40 minutes west of Kingston on a straight run along Rt. 28, neatly fills that bill. About an hour from Albany and two hours more or less from the New York City/North Jersey Metro area, the resort makes a day trip a reality for urbanites.
While there’s no danger of Belleayre ever becoming an Olympic ski venue, its trails offer enough of a challenge for expert and novice skiers alike.
The Catskills resort is owned by New York State’s Olympic Regional Development Authority, a public benefit corporation originally formed to manage the facilities at the 1980 Lake Placid games. Not too long ago in a move to cut expenses, New York dispensed with the Belleayre Gold Lifetime card that granted seniors over 70 the opportunity to ski for free. There was also a Silver Sliders Card for those with little color but silver in their hair, that also offered older skiers courtesies. But according to mountain spokesmen that program was discontinued because of a lack of participation.
Holders of the Gold Card often arrived at Belleayre on midweek days and more often than not were practically the only ones on the slope. Looking at the Gold and Silver cards, it’s difficult to understand why they would have been discontinued for lack of participation. The cost to the state of granting such privilege was microcosmic.
In view of the fact that they did not detract from the mountain’s bottom line, they could have carried on infinitum. But powers beyond the mountain—read that to say “Albany”—decided that those over 70 years of age should pay to ski. The savings hardly filled the budget gap for Gov. Cuomo.
There are discounted program that are currently offered. A septuagenarian will pay only $20 for a daily lift ticket. That’s not bad. If you fall into the 65 to 69 age category, your ski tab is $52 mid week and $60 weekend at the ticket window. If you buy online, that mid week price drops to $32. Belleayre also offers a variety of differently priced passes. A Season Ski3 combo pass good for Belleayre, Gore and Whiteface now costs $999 for those from 65 to 69. A Belleayre only pass was listed as $459 for 70 plus. Season passes would have been way cheaper if purchased in August.
All of that being said, Belleayre is one of the more attractive ski destinations in the Lower Northeast. It’s easy to get to and drive time is more than reasonable. The runs offer enough excitement for expert skiers with a variety of Black Diamonds running from the summit to the lodge.
The blues are a terrific variety that give skiers an opportunity to condition their legs and move on to a more challenging blue before hitting the steep moguls and runs on the black diamond trails. Green trails are often used to loosen up before hitting blues or blacks and are both easy enough for true novices and interesting enough for older skiers who simply want to put on skis and enjoy a day on the slopes.
Even on holidays and weekends when the caravans of buses head to the mountain from New York City, North Jersey, Albany and every school district in-between, the lift lines move along at a rapid pace giving you the opportunity to spend more time on the mountain and less time getting there.
The mix of skiers and snowboarders, young and not so young gives Belleayre a great panache. Respect for each other is paramount and it’s not uncommon to see a senior skier stopping to help or offer advice and suggestions to a younger skier who seems to be struggling down hill.
The mountain’s ski/snowboard school offers instructors capable of working with any age group to truly imparting the love of skiing.
[authors_page role=contributor]