Reviewing the News w/ Cody Townsend (Dec 2021) (Ep.197)

On the Blister Podcast, Cody and Jonathan discuss the current situation of under-staffed & overcrowded ski areas; national parks and Native American tribes; the looming shortage of lithium batteries for electric vehicles; whether or not to ski the backcountry with your dog; what we’re watching; and more.
Cody Townsend descending Mt. St. Elias (photo by Bjarne Salen)

Cody and I discuss the current situation of under-staffed & overcrowded ski areas; national parks and Native American tribes; the looming shortage of lithium batteries for electric vehicles; whether or not to ski the backcountry with your dog; what we’re watching; and more.

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8 comments on “Reviewing the News w/ Cody Townsend (Dec 2021) (Ep.197)”

  1. Any chance the worker shortage has something not do with not being able to bring in as many overseas workers due to covid? Also my friend who is a patroller at snowbird said the Wasatch resorts not being fully open has to do with avalanche risk / safety and high winds they have had and nothing to do with staff shortages.

    • That’s definitely a huge part of it in Canada, there’s an exchange program in place that means a huge portion of the resort staff are usually Australian, that hasn’t happened during covid so there’s been a big staff shortage. That said, all terrain is open here and I haven’t noticed any other issues with hill operations. Things are still running pretty smoothly

  2. I suspect the cheap mega-passes aren’t impacting diversity issues because season passes aren’t how people get into the sport. I don’t know anyone who has bought a pass their first season as a skier. I skied on day tickets only for my first seven years. Skiing can be cheap if you get started on shoddy thrift store gear, until you need AWD and snow tires to reach the ticket window with $100 or more ready to throw down. Many areas offer “beginner” tickets with access to only a few lifts. I’d bet those pricing structures play a much bigger role for new participants getting started and considering whether they want to commit to being a passholder the next year. They did for me anyway. That, and transportation to the mountain.

    • Local hills in the midwest probably have a bigger chance of bringing diversity into the sport than the mega hills.

      Cheap tickets and proximity to relatively diverse cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee where people are already familiar with the cold. Pull in more school groups, offer affordable youth learn-to-ski programs and bus access from the city…

      Places like Denver or SLC may have the better mountain proximity, but they aren’t very diverse, especially in the middle-class and above.

  3. Have y’all done a podcast on how Vail’s ownership of CBMR has affected Crested Butte and the resort? Is there a positive?
    Even if that move predates Blister’s move to CB, it seems like it would be a really good Blister Pod Episode.

  4. Thanks for the recommendations as always both! If you revisit The Alpinist/14 Peaks next month, be really interesting to hear you discuss 14 Peaks & Nims approach to mountaineering. Heard/read some pushback on him as a person and his “style”, however on the other hand it felt like his approach, attitude & “style” deliberately challenged western mountaineering as a colonial and oppressive construct. (Think there is possibly some interesting links back to some of the discussion around Native Americans and land use)

  5. I find it interesting that their is a belief cheaper season passes makes for a more inclusive industry; all it does is sure up cash flow and remove the seasonal effect.

    As Dan T said, new skiers but day tickets so this doesn’t bring in new skiers.

    I would argue cheap season tickets have had the opposite effect and in fact made the skiing more expensive. Human nature is to want value, I don’t know anybody who has purchased a season pass and not tried to work out how to maximise their skier days, it starts with a few extra days, then extra weekends and holidays away.

    All these extra days pushes demand on other services like accommodation on ski hills and prices for these have gone through the roof. Pretty sure there was a series of podcasts on this.

    So no cheap season tickets have had the opposite effect.

  6. @Dan T ” I don’t know anyone who has bought a pass their first season as a skier. ”

    I think you’re generally right, but we did. My wife and I tried alpine skiing at the end of of a season on a day tickets and liked it. So the next weekend when we went to buy day tickets we saw the mountain (Mountain Creek in New Jersey) was selling next season’s season pass for a good price (3x day price) and they’d honor it right away. So we jumped in it.

    We skiied basically one day on a day pass and that was it. I wasn’t sure we were hooked, but the price was so competitive compared to day passes, we did it.

    But you’re right about the mega-mountain passes probably not bring people into the sport.

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