Reviewing the News w/ Cody Townsend, June 2025 (Ep.364)

13 comments on “Reviewing the News w/ Cody Townsend, June 2025 (Ep.364)”

1. Warm take of the week:
   The more uncomfortable chairlift, the better. Or rather, the “more comfortable” chairs are worse.

   This comes after riding on one of these bubble-heated chairs and genuinely I hated the experience. I dress for the weather, and sitting in a bubble caused me goggles to fog, my head to sweat, all because I’m dressed for the wind outside the bubble. Even worse when the seats are heated and now my back is sweaty.

   Maybe I’m not the target audience, but I’m ok with being uncomfortable outside, it keeps me honest and forces me to prepare. Cushions are also on thin ice, I find they soak through when it’s falling wet and heavy (Coastal BC problems), while the wooden-bar seats feel better in those conditions.

   So that’s the take: being uncomfortable is better (can be planned around), being forced into comfort is awful. This might be as mild as my last take though haha

   • Agreed, don’t get me started on the misery that is a gondola. Give me a nice slow two/three chair, no bar needed.

2. Sorry Jonathan here comes a long rant. You have ridden on a chair with me so you know some of this stuff.

   Chairlifts!!!! This is the scariest thing about skiing hands down. I do not know what happened in the time, I was away from skiing, but heights are a thing for me and most people. I think about this very subject almost daily since I started skiing again (crazy for a guy who lives in Los Angeles). My risk decision tree for “go / no go” in a particular zone has everything to do with the chairlift ride vs the potential for cliffs or difficult skiing.

   The only 2 items I can come up with for not putting the bar down is you are a person who lives in the mountains / skies a ton and have been riding chairlifts non stop for a VERY long time. So as Cody says you are “comfortable, and the bar feels restricting on a nice day”. But for most people that is not a reality. The second is you ski at a local bump in the Midwest and the chair ride is very short and 15ft in the air.

   However, let’s look at the reasons why the bar should come down. 1) New chairlifts are a LOT Faster. So when they stop they stop faster as well. 2) Some chairs lifts are FREAKING high. Cody case in point Resort Chair at Palisades. Slow and VERY High. 3) Wind happens. In some places a LOT of wind. 4) At my size, I feel like some of the chairs push my center of gravity as a tall person to leaning forward. Paradise Chair at CB is a perfect example 5) Stuff happens, I think it would be a terrible way to die because you sneezed at the same time the high speed quad stopped.

   While I do not think it should be a law, I am really surprised resorts are not enforcing a bar down policy. You will gain a lot more customers than you will loose. The fact that some resorts have chairs without a bar is crazy to me. That is just asking for additional litigation.

   Sinners, VERY interesting movie. Kimberly took me to this and I had ZERO clue what I was walking into. After getting over the WTF factor, I was very entertained. I need to know more: How did the Vampire Couple spend the 60+ years from that night until they met the Old Man in the bar in the closing scene. Then the same question on the Young Kid / Old Man. BTW, going to this movie, was how I got Kimberly to sign off on me going to Mammoth Memorial Day weekend to go skiing.

   The Bear, Jonathan you are not alone. Kimberly is Team Bear as well.

   Ok I should get back to work now.

   • Great points, Peter.

     1st: I think you’re right, those of us who spend a ton of time riding chairlifts are likely far more comfortable doing so (whether or not we *should* feel any more comfortable is a whole other question) than the 90+ percent of people who spend quite a lot less time riding chairlifts. And I think it’s pretty obvious that the policy here should be made with the comfort and the safety of the many (for all the reasons you state), rather than the few. That seems quite democratic.

     2nd: Kimberly and I clearly need to hang out more!

3. I was riding the Palmer lift at Timberline a couple of weeks ago and put the bar down just to rest my legs. Was glad I did! As the chair approached the half-way station (where more skiers can get on) it shook violently side to side. I could have easily been tossed off. I admit I was sitting toward one of the ends, so the imbalance may have played a roll. On the next trip up I was riding with a guy from Seattle and asked if I could put the bar down. He seemed a little put-off, so I explained what had happened last time. He then reluctantly agreed. Much to my embarrassment the violent shake didn’t happen, I guess because the chair was better balanced that time with two of us on it.

   I’m surprised insurance companies don’t pressure ski areas to make it mandatory.

4. I’m pretty ambivalent to the bar, but I think there are a couple of benefits that aren’t really being discussed

   1) Chairlift power naps

   As a card-carrying member of the vertically-challenged who skipped length day at the gym, I generally don’t feel super secure sitting on the chair without some amount of attention paid to my butt not slipping off the chair. Having the bar down enables secure chairlift power naps as I attempt to ignore the latest diabolically insane conversation my friends are having in the attempt to annoy me, as is tradition.

   2) Security theater on Red Dog

   As Cody is probably aware, Palisades used to have a fixed grip quad servicing the Red Dog run. In the middle of the chairlift ride, that chair used to dangle you 100+ feet in the air (OK, probably not that much). I remember being around that area when the chairlift stopped and the chair started swinging. Gently, mind you. Cue internal screaming and metaphorical/almost literal brown pants moment. The bar came down every time after. Even if the bar is just security theater, I will take that comfort over the feeling of pins and needles at my extremities as I white-knuckle death-grip the sides of the chair.

   • Aaron,
     The old Red Dog lift was really high. Lowering the height over Poulsen’s Gully was done to improve the customer experience with the new lift. Listening to an interview with the former CEO Dee Byrne she also does not like heights, and is not a fan of the Resort Chair.

5. Vermont mandates the bar down. Vermont Passenger Tramway Safety Rules And Addendum to ANSI B77.1-2022.

   Not putting the bar down is dumb. This issue is not the likelihood but the severity of injury.

6. Only one of the six chairs at my local hill has a bar. None of them are high speed, but some are fairly high off the ground. On the few days when I’ve been hung over and feeling queasy, I’ve thrown an arm over the back of the chair and taken myself to my happy place, where my skis are on the ground. Hot take (to use the language of the youth kids): Chairs that carry more than two people are fucking dumb. It means that strangers are forced to endure me and/or my dirtbag friends.

7. I ski in Alberta and BC. Almost everyone rides with the bar down here. When they don’t automatically put the bar down, 98% of the time, they are American. A cultural ski difference I guess, Canadians tend to follow the rules more? (ie all the lifts here have signs saying, put the bar down).
   I don’t feel that the bar infringes on my personal liberty and it potentially could save someone’s life. If a 5s inconvenience of moving your head out of the way to put the bar down is a major downer for your day, I’m not sure what to say.
   As others have written, if you ski a lot and are familiar with lifts, maybe it’s fine without on most days, but there a lot of people who do not (and maybe do not know the dangers of lifts, or when to expect the chairlift to move suddenly/wind etc) and then also kids clearly do not know, are small and at higher risk. So why not just put the bar down? Maybe it doesn’t need to be a state or provincial “law”, but I think the resorts should just have a general rule. There is a difference between the personal decision of how much risk to take for eg when skiing backcountry or skiing a steep slope on resort, vs public risk on a public mode of transportation that brings all comers together. In this case, better to air on the side of CAUTION because many people are not competent to assess the risk themselves.

   • Well stated, Erin.

8. I never have a problem with putting the bar down on the rare occasion somebody asks.

9. RE: Peak Ski Co: I thought I would include a few links here for posterity:

   https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001922171
   https://formds.com/issuers/peak-ski-company-llc
   https://blisterreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Peak_Ski_Form_C.pdf (already posted on Blister’s previous podcast page)

   I’ve seen coverage on the overspending, inflated claims, and unfulfilled contracts, but not much attention given to a timeline of the funding. We can’t see everything that happened behind the scenes, but the links above provide a partial glimpse.

   Although those links don’t disclose any equity offerings or ownership distribution, that Form C does show that Crosson Skis founder Chase Engelhart is a part owner of Peak, and it has been reported that Wirth once confirmed that both Davenport and Parker have a stake in the company. What those links do provide is a rough timeline for some of the incoming cash from investors who bought debt securities (not equity).

   Between April 2022 and June 2023, Peak seems to have received at least $3.7M in cash investment from debt securities. Yet it seems that not much of that $3.7M cash was used to pay Michelle & Dav in 2023, nor to pay the 85SIXTY marketing agency (who sued Peak for $875K of outstanding amounts allegedly owed in July 2023, which was only a short ~8 months after Peak announced Michelle’s signing, which Michelle called a long “3-year deal”). And then later with the February 2024 crowdfunding raise, it sounds like not much of that $1.2M cash was used to pay Michelle & Dav in 2024.

   These particular issues around funding and withheld payments reflect more poorly on a CEO (i.e. Wirth) than on a Chief Innovation Officer (i.e. Bode). Plus, sources published that both Michelle & Dav reported directly to Wirth — not to Bode. Regardless, it appears that Bode cut off communication just as egregiously as Wirth did.

   Lastly, keep in mind that Peak ain’t 100% dead yet. Just look at Marvel: after filing for bankruptcy, Marvel overhauled leadership, rebuilt for 13 years, then were acquired for $4.3 billion, and now their division within Disney is worth an estimated ~$50 billion.