25-26 Season Passes

[urungus]

good for them, since we all want to enjoy our time on the hill

Unfortunately it is not good for the rest of us when the super-wealthy take ski areas like Haystack and Windham private - no enjoying time on those hills for the rest of us anymore.

 

[cdskier]

Unfortunately it is not good for the rest of us when the super-wealthy take ski areas like Haystack and Windham private - no enjoying time on those hills for the rest of us anymore.

Agreed. I'm not as familiar with Haystack and alternatives in that area, but for Windham shifting it more and more to private is a substantial number of skier visits that need to go elsewhere. There's only 3 major resorts in the Catskills. (Sorry Platty, I love you but you're not a resort for the general masses). Taking 1/3 out of the equation is a big shift with people needing to go elsewhere. Not exactly like Hunter and Belleayre are under-utilized either. I suppose some NYC/NJ skiers could shift to the Berkshires as well, but for some reason that never seemed like a big draw for anyone I know from this demographic.

 

[drjeff]

Unfortunately it is not good for the rest of us when the super-wealthy take ski areas like Haystack and Windham private - no enjoying time on those hills for the rest of us anymore.

Hermitage wise, the reality is if it wasn't private now, it long ago would of been closed and now overgrown. Heck, even when it was owned by ASC and was available on their passes, the place was a ghost town that wasn't sustainable operations wise in that form. There certainly can be situations where a limited geographic region is oversaturated with ski areas, and often in cases like that, the smallest one has the greatest challenge maintaing operations.

Heck, you can look at the Magic/Bromley/Stratton region. While all 3 are operating and seemingly "good" health, I think we all saw that the least bank rolled of them. Magic, definitely had it's moments not all that long ago, where it was on life support, and probably needed to be defibrulated a couple of times, before it found some investors with both a deep passion for the place, and enough working capital to slowly bring it back to a much healthier place than it's been in a long time, and possibly ever.

The key is to finding a target market that makes it work, and in the case of some resorts, if that market is a private club setting, well then it probably wasn't very succesful over an extended period of time, as a public ski area. Windham might be in it's own category as the proximity to the $$ of the New York Metro area, as well as the realtively few other decent sized ski areas in the region, likely gives it the chance to go the private route

 

[abc]

Windham is a different phenomenon than Hermitage and/or Magic.

Unlike the southern Vermont mountains, Windham suffers from overcrowding rather than neglect. So it’s a novel approach to jack the price way up to cull the crowd.

I seem to recall, right here on this board, quite a few posters said the big mountains are too crowded due to the cheap mega passes. And they hypothesized season pass price should go back to the old days (and some) to keep the slopes from being a zoo. Well, Windham is putting into practice exactly that theory!

I hope those are not the same posters?

 

[Edd]

Hermitage wise, the reality is if it wasn't private now, it long ago would of been closed and now overgrown. Heck, even when it was owned by ASC and was available on their passes, the place was a ghost town that wasn't sustainable operations wise in that form. There certainly can be situations where a limited geographic region is oversaturated with ski areas, and often in cases like that, the smallest one has the greatest challenge maintaing operations.

Heck, you can look at the Magic/Bromley/Stratton region. While all 3 are operating and seemingly "good" health, I think we all saw that the least bank rolled of them. Magic, definitely had it's moments not all that long ago, where it was on life support, and probably needed to be defibrulated a couple of times, before it found some investors with both a deep passion for the place, and enough working capital to slowly bring it back to a much healthier place than it's been in a long time, and possibly ever.

The key is to finding a target market that makes it work, and in the case of some resorts, if that market is a private club setting, well then it probably wasn't very succesful over an extended period of time, as a public ski area. Windham might be in it's own category as the proximity to the $$ of the New York Metro area, as well as the realtively few other decent sized ski areas in the region, likely gives it the chance to go the private route

I had one of those ASC passes and I went everywhere but Haystack, I was so obsessed with the bigger places. Now that I'm the opposite, I reget not hitting Haystack when I literally had a pass to it.

 

[thetrailboss]

I had one of those ASC passes and I went everywhere but Haystack, I was so obsessed with the bigger places. Now that I'm the opposite, I reget not hitting Haystack when I literally had a pass to it.

Same here.

 

[chuckstah]

I had one of those ASC passes and I went everywhere but Haystack, I was so obsessed with the bigger places. Now that I'm the opposite, I reget not hitting Haystack when I literally had a pass to it.

I used to skip Haystack as well, until ASC adopted a no blackout days at Haystack only policy, regardless of what pass level you had. We hit Haystack every holiday period from that point on, and it was never very crowded.

 

[machski]

Used to race at Haystack during mid '90's in college. Always thought it was a fun little place, when not racing and they were in play the Witches pod was quite a bit of fun.