SNOW MAKING!!

Dick Harris came to talk to us about snow making.  He was previously the director at the balsams resort and before that my dream resort Alyeska.  His information was very good and i learned quite a bit about how to pressureize the water.  It seemed like he was a little biased for airless systems and fan guns, but never the less it was good information.  i never realized why snow guns were so loud, and its amazing that the air comes out of them at 700+ miles per hour.

damn helicopters

So the week after the chili we went to burke to watch the towers get placed.  No helicopters showed up and I was very sick that week.  So we went home early on tuesday and i stayed home on thursday.

Speedy chair pads and Chili

In the beginning of November we got tricked into being slaves at Burke Mountain.  164 chairs needed seat pads and our class were the ones to do it.  We got the whole lift done in 1.5 hours and one chair only took about 12 seconds.  I didnt do much except for supply Sam with more pads when he needed them, but its hard for 18 people to work on 2 chairs at once.
That weekend we had the Chili cook off.  I was stuck selling drinks behind the counter because im an LOC board member, but i still got to eat my chili.  It was a success and there were alot of people.  I dont think the skate jam went very well though and we couldnt even cover the costs of the toilet.  I think next year we should look into doing a ski and board rail jam.

BRETTON WOOOOOOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One week this semester we took a trip to good ol' bretton woods.  This was a great adventure because we got to talk to James, who is a jolly man!  I also got creeped on by the local tubing guy Greg.  We sat around alot but got to talk to the very pretty human resources manager.  We got to talk to the snow making guy who was pretty funny and other various lifts guys.  After our adventure at the mountain we went over to the Mt. Washington hotel which was SICK.  We got a nice tour from Sean and got to learn all the bull shit that they tell people.
Later that week we had clean up day at the outing club and i was very dissapointed with the attendance.  Alot of stuff got done but i wish it had gone better.  I got to cut down a wall which was fun.

JAY PEAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jay Peak was SICK!!! we got a full tour of their new facilities including the water park, which i am going to be working in soon.  we got to talk with a bunch of different manager on the mountain, but i got the most out of the conversation we had with Walter.  I really enjoyed him and he kind of gave me a little insight into what i want to do with my future.  He showed us their master plan and explained why it has changed a bunch of times because of environmental issues.  I am happy that i get to go to there for the spring!

Burke Mtn w/ Dick Andross

In october we had a sweet trip to Burke Mountain where we met with VP Dick Andross.  He showed us the master plan of burke and gave us a little tour.  We went to the top of the hill to check out the wind tower, which was awesome, and he also explained the energy consumption and how it will overall produce enough energy over a year to power the new lift for a season.  We checked out some of the tower forms and other things with the new lift like the placement of the top terminal.  This was a good experiance to see how a master plan is done because right now i have to create one for the NFCT for a business internship.

New England Ski Museum

Some day back in september we took a trip to Cannon Mountain and the New England Ski Museum.  This trip was very interesting because i got to see the history of skiing in new england.  They had some great old gear and pictures that were very interesting and they also had the old LOC patch, which we are trying to reconstruct.  We also saw a great powerpoint about the history of skiing in NE.  After our little tour of the museum SEAN DOLL decided it would be a great idea to go up the tram, which i did not really enjoy because its toooooo high for ben.  alot of the students went for a hike and they got rained on and it was pretttttty funny.  but over all it was a fun day.

Cable Splice and Tower disassembly

In September one week we headed up to the LOC for a cable splice that we were going to help with, BUT bobjoe did not raise the counterweight enough so all we ended up doing was rigging the cable and other prep work for them to do the splice the next day.  Also this same week we headed to stowe and got to look at the new lift that they are installing.  It was a good thing to see and they explained all the work that they had to do to make the new lift top drive because the old one was a bottom drive.  We also had to disassemble some tower assemblies which was annoying because of the lack of tools and abundance of student workers.

SUMMIT

Last Thursday I attended a snowsports conference at Sunday River.  I thought it was really great and had a good time.  I went to a seminar about growing the sport and what we need to do to get new skiers and riders on the slopes.  The presenter was the president of NSAA and i got a lot of great information from him, and he was very comical.  I also went to another seminar on marketing that was aimed at the younger generation.  The lady basically said that we need to learn to market in social media and to be very technologically advanced to keep up.  I spent a lot of time walking around talking to vendors during lunch and got a lot of great information.  I had a few questions that i wanted answered and one of the first ones i asked to Brandon Rogers, the sales manager at Amlon Ticket.  I asked him how he had gotten into the business and he just took over for his parents who had started the business.  Not really the answer i wanted, but its what i got.  Next i spent quite a lot of time talking with Bruce Whitney, general manager at U Source, about energy.  I had alot of questions for him, which is too much to list, but i was very interested because i am looking into the business management part of the ski industry.  Next i taked to Barbara Worzalla, assistant vice president at Travel Guard, and she explained me the need to buy the travel insurance she was selling.  I asked her how business was doing and surprisingly sales were up 30 percent from last year and usually grow 20% annually.  International sales were what was driving this growth though because of how week the US dollar is.  Next i asked Kelly-Jane Arsenault from Cultural Homestay International about their international programs and i asked her if i should head to a different country to work.  Her response was YES, GO TO CHILI.  Finally i spent a very large amount of time talking to Adam Portz, an associate from SE Group, about what he does.  I learned that their company basically provides consultant services for ski resort development and i may have found what i want to do.  I asked him if he had any advice for someone coming into the industry and he told me to just go for it.  He was very impressed with the path that i am on right now because of my double major in business admin as well and my drive to get my MBA after college.  So, overall i loved this conference and hope i get to go back next year....

L.O.C

We spent the day at the outing club organizing events and improvements that we can make to the non-profit ski club.  I think this is a great idea to help out the community and learn what we love while doing it.  It seems like a win win for everyone, but we will see what happens.  I am looking forward to this semester!