Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Mountain Update

Now that we've all gotten settled in our new offices, we can refocus on the push to opening day. We open in exactly 1 month! While it's been a little warmer than normal for this time of year, it looks like a cold front will slide in on Sunday. The low forecast for the mesa Sunday night is only 12 degrees so we should be on schedule to start snowmaking the week of the 12th.

The pace has definitely picked up. The amount of Starbucks cups I see in the trash rises as the number of days to Opening Day decreases. As I've said before, people always ask me what it takes to open for ski season. It's a little more than turning on the lifts. Last week we completed our last round of lift inspections to get the final 'go' to host public for ski season. The rental shop managers have arrived to start sorting out their inventory. They had a little hickup though as they found their computer had gotten fried over the summer do to a lightning strike. Our IT manager is burning roughly 10,000 calories per day right now running around the mountain checking ticketing systems, replacing computers, and (as always) answering our wonderful questions. Did you know a computer technically has to be plugged into an outlet in order to work? In marketing we are wrapping up our travels to various ski shows, setting up sponsor and advertising contracts, planning events, and watching the occasional ski video....for inspiration of course. The ladies of the Alpine Trader are once again buried in merchandise. And the ticket office is consuming large amounts of chocolate to keep them sane as they print pass after pass. If you have a request for our ticket manager right now you have to knock on the door, hand her chocolate, make your request, smile, and bow before you leave.

This post is getting a little long so I'll wrap it up. But start those snow dances! Just make sure you do it in appropriate places, unlike this guy...

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