What Kind of Ski Snob Are You?

If you think about it, we are all ski snobs of one sort or another. Some are terrain snobs and care about nothing else but lapping the steepest, gnarliest, longest, and most consistently-pitched lines they can find.

Hickory Ski Center

Others are snow snobs who don’t bother leaving the house unless there’s a decent amount of powder waiting for them; and if the lift-served ski areas don’t have it, they’ll go off-the-map for their fix. Of course, for most people, the best situation is getting both powder and great terrain at the same time, but hey, this is the northeast and we have to deal with whatever’s on the menu for a given day and not whine about it.

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Steve Wright of Jay Peak Resort

Steve Wright Jay Peak Resort.I first ran into Steve Wright in cyberspace on the First Tracks Online eastern forum a few years ago. As Jay Peak’s Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, he occasionally popped into discussions to add a comment or two. But instead of coming off as a ski-resort salesman — there only to perform damage control or to publicize something — Steve took us behind the curtain to explain how and why things happen at ski-area marketing departments, both at Jay Peak and industry-wide.

As Jay transforms itself from a no-frills mountain with the deepest lift-served snow east of the Rockies into one with a fair amount of destination resort accoutrements, we thought that it’d be interesting to hear his thoughts on a variety of marketing-related topics.

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Windham, NY: 3/30/11

I got smoked at Windham in early February arriving right after a major rain/freeze event, but today more than made up for it.

Windham-Village

Spring skiing doesn’t get much better than this. 45 degrees and a blazing sun softened everything to sweet, edgeable sugar, but because it was so cold overnight, the base didn’t turn to mush, even late in the day.

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