21-22 Vail/Stevens Pass Monitoring reports

Yea Avajane!!!

In other good news I just received this email

To Our Valued Pass Holders at Stevens Pass,Thank you for patience and understanding as we navigate a challenging start to the 2021/22 ski and ride season at Stevens Pass. As the new Interim General Manager of the resort, I want to take this opportunity to provide you with a few updates on our operations and how we plan to honor your loyalty as a pass holder.As I have been sharing with guests on our  blog , we have made good progress in the last couple of weeks getting more terrain open and implementing new strategies to make sure we are providing you with a great experience. Yesterday, in addition to being a beautiful blue bird day, we were excited to open additional lifts and trails – we had 72% of our terrain available. This weekend, we’re hoping to have 86% open. Looking forward, our plan is to open all our lifts as soon as we have enough employees trained to do so safely. In the meantime, we are prioritizing our resources to maximize the experience. Right now, we have seven lifts on weekends and plan to add Jupiter and the backside this Friday, which will bring us to eight out of 10 lifts running Friday through Sunday. You can read more about our next lift priorities (both for daytime and night skiing)  here .As we shared previously, hiring has been a challenge at Stevens Pass this season for a variety of reasons. It was a bit of a perfect storm of circumstances, which certainly included the impacts from Omicron. At times over the holidays, upwards of 30% of our lift operators were out due to COVID-19 or symptoms. That aside, we are very focused on bringing on additional people, and I am proud to share that we have hired many new team members over the last month. We secured additional housing for employees and added a $2 per hour bonus to their compensation, which is supporting these efforts. We also provide free transportation to both Monroe and Wenatchee and just increased the size of the bus to accommodate more staff. We have amazing employees and are working hard to ensure they feel recognized, appreciated and engaged.I also want to address the concerns many of you have raised as pass holders. We have heard that you do not feel the experience so far this season has lived up to your expectations and you want to know how our company plans to address those concerns. As you know, our passes are non-refundable given they are highly discounted products that provide access all season long and because we cannot predict exactly how the season will play out in terms of conditions or terrain. Pass holders accept the possibility of limited terrain and variable conditions in exchange for significant discounts. While we provide Epic Coverage for no additional cost, it does not provide refunds relating to the amount of terrain open; rather, it provides refunds for certain resort closures or personal events such as job loss, injury or illness. That said, we acknowledge that Stevens Pass has experienced very unique challenges this season – unique in comparison to any prior season, unique for the region, and unique when compared to the 36 other resorts our company operates throughout North America.We greatly value your loyalty as a pass holder as well as your passion for Stevens Pass. To honor that loyalty, we are offering you the option of a discount on a 22/23 Stevens Pass season pass or a spend credit to use at Stevens Pass during the 22/23 ski and ride season:

• 22/23 pass renewal discount for Stevens Pass: As a 21/22 pass holder receiving this email, you and any dependent with a 21/22 pass are eligible for the following discounts on 22/23 Stevens Pass season passes:
  • $150 discount off Adult, Young Adult, and Teen Passes:
    • Stevens Pass Premium Adult Pass at $385 (compared to $535 this season).
    • Stevens Pass Premium Young Adult Pass at $305 (compared to $455 this season).
    • Stevens Pass Premium Teen Pass at $169 (compared to $319 this season).
    • Stevens Pass Select Adult Pass at $193 (compared to $343 this season).
  • $50 discount off Senior Passes:
    • Stevens Pass Premium Senior Pass at $53 (compared to $103 this season).
    • Stevens Pass Select Senior Pass at $37 (compared to $87 for this season).

OR

• $150 renewal spend credit at Stevens Pass for 22/23 season
  • If you choose to renew or purchase a 22/23 Epic, Epic Local, Epic Military, Epic 4-7 Day pass, 5 Day Edge Card, or 10 Day Edge Card for yourself, you will receive a Stevens Pass spend credit of $150.00 that you can use next season at Stevens Pass for restaurants, retail and rental locations, lift tickets or for ski and ride school lessons. This offer is valid for 21/22 pass holders who received this email, as well as any dependent who has a 21/22 pass.

To be eligible for either of these offers, you will need to renew or purchase your pass by May 30, 2022.More details on how you can redeem this offer will be emailed to you directly in the weeks to come and before our passes for next season go back on sale in March. However, we wanted to provide you this information now as we have heard your concerns and want to share the actions we are taking in response, in addition to the progress we are making with hiring and terrain openings.Thank you again for your patience and for your passion. The team at Stevens Pass and I are working hard to improve every day, and I am truly looking forward to a great season ahead. Stevens Pass is an incredibly special resort. Everyone at Vail Resorts is committed to its future success and to ensuring we provide all of you an amazing experience each time you visit.Tom FortuneInterim General ManagerStevens Pass

Ava good on you mate.   Remember to bring your thermos of hot beverage and donut or cookie to get you through the time you're out in the cold.   Oh yeah and learn to love the kids on the race ski team,

Nice to see people doing more than just complain. Looks like jupiter starts running friday, with southern/double the following week, under some sort of alternating plan. They intend to have the backside open everyday starting friday.

blog.stevenspass.com/category/inside-stevens/ is getting updated regularly, and the twitter updates are actually real time now, which I've never seen even pre-vail. They'd be 1h or more late, and watching the dot cam was a much better option.

Was up yesterday, skiing continues to be fun. Bit icy but nbd, bit of corn in a few places. Sunny and warm, front row parking and no lines. The new park on sky has a few nice medium sized features w/good landings. When these were down at the old half pipe, it was real easy to overshoot them. The waterfall line has two wedges on each now, which seems smart.

I would not really consider Vail a private equity company.  They are a strategic in the skiing space.  I work for a PE company and they do not have the model of ours or any similar company.  they are not trying to build ebitda value for a resell process.  

Vail is doing exactly what they say they're doing: hedging against climate change. They correctly expect many resorts to have repeated bad years and eventually close, so they pre-sell passes that allow people to use multiple regions in exchange for the end user taking some of that risk. To do that, they need to own resorts all over the place. So they've more than tripled or quadrupled in size in as many years, which is a very hard thing to handle and they didn't do it well.

Lift accessed skiing is going to be over in my lifetime, with maybe a random place here or there running a lift or two for a couple months. Might as well start the grieving process now

I have my training day this coming Friday. If you see an old long hair bumping the Backside soon that’ll be me. Stay positive. Going up tomorrow for hopefully a powder day!