Mountain Creek Resort

Yep.

Um, yeah, there's a hub, Mountain Creek, home of Danny Kass-

Sick.

[laughs]

So what did you think about that? Do you think Vail should, could, would, will end up parting with Park City? And do you think that Matthew Prince would be a good next owner? Or would you like to see something else happen entirely? Or would you like to see Vail keep it? Let's get some quick reader feedback.

This one is from Steve Rapp on the pod with Mountain Creek General Manager Evan Kovac last week.

Steven said, you did it again, Stu.

I keep swearing I'm not going to write again.

...

I have a history with pre-ride because I, pre-ride for suckers just came about because at Mountain Creek, w- we did a pre-ride-

You know? Yes

... and I sent it and crashed, yeah.

So but not a ton of drops.

Definitely not a place where you're gonna get to...

Like at Mountain Creek, we know there's three or four really big drops that we're always looking to hit every, every time we go, and they're full commitment, huge drops.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's big snow.

It's Mountain Creek.

Then you go up Bel Air, Gore, Whiteface.

What's your take on snow pass and the potential here?

I have some breaking news, which I will get to in a moment, from Alterra Mountain Company.

Separately, we will focus on Mountain Creek, New Jersey, one of the most underrated mountains in the country, in my opinion.

First, though, let's get to some breaking news.

In March, Alterra Mountain Company said goodbye to Jared Smith, its CEO since 2022.

All right.

Looks like we have Evan in the queue, so let's get to Evan now.

My guest today has been general manager of Mountain Creek, New Jersey since 2020.

Mountain Creek spans more than two miles along four peaks, served by nine lifts.

who live in New Jersey.

And I'm like, do you have a mountain Creek pass? They're like, no, why would I ski there? I ski out West.

I'm like, well, Right.

It's not, you know, Jackson Hole, but it has a thousand vertical feet and high speed lifts.

I'll call them, but just talk about those passes and snow operating and why, because I imagine you could have joined Indy pass years ago, but, but why was, why, why did you finally go with snow operating?

So we've had a great relationship with snow operating.

Obviously we're a little later in the ball game with the turning base learning, but we've had such good success with them and such a positive relationship with whole group um that it was kind of like the natural choice for us to go with them yeah um last year yeah we were on the uh the triple play which was kind of the product that came out of something they were doing on mountain creek for a number of years and you know thinking about it when you approached us with the idea it was like yeah we'd love to attract new folks and like we share a similar demographic it goes out to them they can go with us out of the city or for that And it just made sense, you know, and we did see a value last year in bringing new people to Southernton.

And I'm sure they saw a value with people in our general area buying that pastage for their mountains.

I asked them, "Hey, can we, uh, give you any profits we make from this?" They were extremely happy, and we needed a little bit of logistic support.

Uh, Kat over at Mountain Creek jumped on board.

Uh, she's been absolutely wonderful helping us get this off the ground, and it's been a real community lift.

So we're, we're hoping this shakes out to be a, a really fun event for everyone.

I mean, I, I honestly think rope tow is one of the best ski instructors you could ever have.

Yeah.

Um, but I got, I got my first turns in there, and then primary skied Mountain Creek, Vernon Valley, um, out in Shawnee.

I got all my cousins' hand-me-downs, so I had those like neon pink, you know, thick s- uh, synthetic snow pants.

You know, just to drop the energy.

But, uh, Sprinter's, my Sprinter, I don't know, like, after Mountain Creek, I got home, and it, dude, there was some noise coming out of, like, the whole pulley, uh, belt.

I don't know.

It was making noise.

You know, he was kind of like making the case that he doesn't think that we need multi-passes.

And he was almost implying that the Indy Pass is unnecessary because, you know, like his hill, Mountain Creek, he, of course, for anybody that doesn't remember, is the owner-operator of Mountain Creek and Big Snow, you know, the mall operation in New Jersey.

And...

he set up a bunch of mutual agreements and then as a kind of an extension of the mutual agreements, he created the triple play last year where you can buy, you know, I forget why, you know, depending on the, when you buy it, it's going to be between 170, I think, and 200 bucks.

And you get to use, use it at, you know, a bunch of different mountains, you know, You know, Mountain Creek, Platic Hill, the Orta Hills were on it last year, a few others.

Now he has the Snow Pass, which is, you know, he would say it's just an extension of the cooperative agreements.

And he was kind of making the case that he wants it to someday go away and all the hills can just have cooperative agreements again, where you go, you get a few, you know, a season pass holder from Mountain Creek gets a couple of days at Platic Hill and wherever else.

And these, you know, it's not like that.