Snowfarmers by Adam Carboni and Tansy Michaud

In September of 2013 we received an email from filmmaker Adam Carboni. He wanted to do a short film on lift maintenance, featuring a mountain in the Catskills.

NYSkiBlog provided contact information for operations and marketing people at each of the four mountains. After some further back and forth by email we didn’t hear more about it until this spring.

Recently Adam reached out again, providing us a Vimeo link to the results of his effort entitled Snowfarmers. What follows is an interview with Adam and Tansy Michaud, the husband and wife team who worked on film together.

Continue reading

Bearpen: The Beast Resurrected

With the future of winter in doubt, what makes someone open a ski center in a remote part of the Catskills?

“Insanity, I guess,” said Bearpen Sports Center owner Howard Rennell. “Kind of a childhood dream. I fell in love with the mountain, as well. It’s been a long, arduous process.”

Bearpen fat bikes

Growing up on the east end of Long Island, Rennell recalled, “Talk about the era of global warming, out there the chances of snow were slim and none. The sledding aspect, as a kid, you and your friends would gather together and make a kind of luge track. Pack it down and go out with watering cans and douse it with water, hoping it would freeze and last a little longer. This is a bigger scale of it.”

Continue reading

The Adaptive Sports Foundation at Windham

Adaptive Sports Foundation Hartman Race
Photo by Marc Bryan-Brown, Courtesy of ASF

Windham Mountain in the northern Catskills is known for hosting the Adaptive Sports Foundation (ASF), a well-regarded program that allows children and adults with physical and cognitive disabilities to experience the joy of snow sports. Last Saturday, ASF held its first-ever Awareness Day to spread the word about the organization’s vital work.

Headquartered in a dedicated 7,200 square-foot lodge with its own equipment shop, ASF’s 240 volunteer instructors donate more than 20,000 hours per year adding up to more than 4,000 lessons, with 3,500 of those during ski season.

In addition, since developing the Warriors in Motion® program 13 years ago, more than 1,500 wounded veterans and family members have used ASF’s services.

Continue reading