Who's Your Boss

Early season at Cardrona means arriving each morning at sunrise - it's worth it!

Here's a little ditty I wrote for Cardrona recently: Who's Your Boss.

https://www.cardrona.com/winter/our-latest/posts/who-s-your-boss/

Different is Good; We Love Different

A classic June inversion and a stunning day on Monday, and Cardrona's operations team made a meal of it.

I’ve seen a lot of mountain resorts while working as an instructor and coach. I have my favorites and I definitely have my opinions about which places and companies are better at what they do. In the Eastern USA, the things that differentiate one resort from another can be subtle (like the often cited “vibe”), and the basic business models of competing resorts can seem remarkably similar. Real differentiation beyond logos, advertising strategy, and a place’s appearance can be tough, and that’s equally true here in New Zealand. Thankfully, I work at Cardrona where we’re different, and not just because our staff wear t-shirts that say “Cardrona Loves You”.

Since I’m sitting on the couch on a day off thinking of how much I Iove the place right back, here’s my semi-serious, totally unofficial, stream-of-consciousness, in no particular order, top 10 list of things that make Cardrona different (and, to be perfectly blunt, better):

1.       Comfy Pillows. Roll over; hit the snooze button; try to figure out why you’re in such a hurry to get out of bed while on vacation; put on your gear and load a lift close to your front door. End your day in your slippers sipping a glass of local pinot noir within sight of the groomers getting to work after the lifts shut. Ahh, the joys of a low-impact alpine vacation! Yes, among New Zealand’s major resorts, Cardrona is the only place where this can happen thanks to the serviced apartments in our base area at Cardrona. Mmm, did someone say slippers?

2.       Kiwis. There are Kiwis all over the place, and that definitely is different. Cardrona has more Kiwis on staff than any other major resort in New Zealand. Like our competitors, we do depend on foreign staff (like yours truly) so the resort goes to great lengths to give all of us a keen sense of place. What we do and who we are as a resort is Kiwi deep down in our DNA, whether we are individual Kiwis or not. It’s one reason we all feel so at home – all our backgrounds are woven together into our Kiwiness. One caveat, though, is that for all my feeling like a part of what makes us Kiwi, I refuse to call ketchup “tomato sauce”. That’s just too much to ask of this Vermont resident native New Yorker.

3.       A Distillery. The Cardrona Distillery is on the valley floor, right across from the bottom of our access road. I’m not a big drinker but I’m not above joking that, going forward, I’ll only work at ski resorts with ready access to a distillery, for medicinal purposes of course.

4.       We Own It. While this is true metaphorically for all that we do, it’s also true literally. Cardrona owns the land where we do business, and that’s very unusual in NZ. Similar to the U.S.A. where many mountain resorts are located on National Forest land, most of Cardrona’s competitors operate on land leased from the Department of Conservation. Not us. Thankfully, our entire leadership team has placed environmental stewardship as a core belief that informs all that we do, but it’s nice that we can get stuff done on our own time and in our own way.

5.       Cheese Scones in the Mezz Café. They’re important. Just beware, there is no methadone treatment for them.

6.       Instructors in Charge. The resort GM; the head of our very big, busy events crew; numerous patrollers; head of base area operations; lefties, baristas, rental supervisors, ticket sales folks, and a lot of other folks throughout the team have been working ski or snowboard instructors at some point. It means, for those of us working in the Snow Sports School, that they understand our view and they bring that guest-centered perspective to all that they do. And they know how to have fun.

7.       A Very Big Tiny Penguin. Cardrona's spokes-penguin Pingy is a Tawaki penguin, the third rarest penguin in the world and a South Island native (http://www.tawaki-project.org/). He rips in the park (https://youtu.be/ajmmXam0kPI), is good at handing out lollies, and is a constant presence. He’s also a buddy of mine and can get a bit unruly when the Highlanders are playing on TV.

8.       Tourism. Cardrona’s owners are not real estate developers. They’re not an unruly committee of funds or bond traders who think they know better. It’s owned by Real Journeys, a Kiwi-owned important player in the New Zealand tourism industry. That means that they’re in the guest experience business, full stop. That’s rare, it makes us better at delivering for our guests and our staff, and it’s got to be luxurious for our managers who are more accustomed to synthesizing arguments for why this or that little guest tid-bit will be good for business. Real Journeys rocks.

9.       Chondy, Baby! Yes, we have a shiny new chondola. The cabins of MacDougal’s Chondola lift are the only alpine resort gondolas in New Zealand. It’s totally awesome, it’s had an enormous operational impact on our lessons already, and we all totally love it. Cardrona’s ability to totally nail its conception, construction and marketing should scare the heck out of our competitors (see #10 below).

10.   A Plan. Every major NZ resort has a dream - base villages, sealed roads, transportation links, all manner of jazzy upgrades. Occasionally over the past decade it’s seemed as though everyone had done engineering studies for a gondola. The difference for Cardrona? The chondy is done, and we’re charging ahead with the plan. Next!

Yeah, yeah, I know. This is a bit of a love note for my employer. No, they haven’t promised me a beer in exchange for it. What I get for all this is more pep in my teaching, I get more enthusiasm for and from the guests I teach, and I get to be surrounded by a bunch of resort staff who are totally pumped. It makes for a much happier and much more exciting working life than many of us are accustomed to finding in this business, and I’m grateful to play a small part. What it really means is that after a restful day off, I’m ready to get back in the action!

Progress; Little Bits of Progress

Over the past two weeks, I’ve made significant progress towards settling into the house where I’m living with a few friends in Wanaka for the New Zealand winter. It’s taken some doing, but the house will feel like home for several months. In contrast, in my eleventh winter here, the town of Wanaka feels like home immediately, in detail, and with far more jet-lag than settling-in time. “Welcome home,” each of my friends say when I arrive back. They mean it, I take it that way, and it definitely feels like it.

Eleven years isn’t really that long a period of time historically, but things have evolved substantially down here in that time. Wanaka is in the midst of a dizzyingly enormous boom – there are more than twice as many front doors here as when I arrived in 2007 and the town will double in size gain over the next few years. The pace of the development can be worrisome in the same way and with the same issues faced by American resort towns as they grow, though I do think the new development here is far greater, far faster, and far more fraught with risk than any that I’ve experienced.

On a personal level, my presence here as this development occurs reminds me of a specific moment from my childhood. I remember vividly being on a vacation on Nantucket Island, sitting on the beach that was a little crowded and a little rowdy for my family’s liking, and watching a New York Air jumbo jet fly overhead on its way to the island’s little airport. That jet was a bright, shiny, and strikingly emblematic icon of a similar dynamic for that once bucolic, middle-class hideaway. The thought dawned on me then as it does now: does my devotion to this place make me part of the problem? I don’t think so, but I do think that sensitivity to it, by all of us who come here, is an important component of helping Wanaka keep hold of its authenticity and remain true to the reasons that draw so many people here.

So, why the photo of the ancient mobile phone? It’s my beloved, eleven-year-old, pay-as-you-go, NZ cell phone. When I bought it, having a cell phone down here was a luxury. Its battery lasts a week, it never drops a call, it’s an incredibly reliable alarm clock, and it’s as hearty as any technological device has ever been. And, regrettably, it’s being replaced this winter. I’ve seriously considered replacing it with a smart phone filled with dazzling applications, fancy graphics, and the battery life of a flea that would connect me to the entirety of the digital world. Instead, like my hopes for Wanaka and all of the resort towns where I live, I’ll replace it with a functional, efficient and useful, slightly sleeker telephone that may have some broader capabilities and more advanced technology but ultimately will serve the purposes for which it is intended with the same vigor, albeit in a more modern and efficient form.

At the bottom it and the top of all of this, Wanaka is a wonderfully warm and welcoming Kiwi town in one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever set foot. It’s no wonder so many people want to be here, I can’t blame them, and I definitely am one of them. Hopefully my new, non-smart cell phone will help me stay connected to my community here and in the USA with the simplicity that I prefer and without losing sight of its real purpose.

It Looks A Lot Like Winter

Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at Okemo

A few days ago, as I drove from my house in the hills above town to do some errands, I had a slightly odd and extended moment of reflection. The snow plows were out and about clearing people’s driveways and the roads after a big storm. The roads all through town were lined with bright white snow banks. Wind was whipping around the newly fallen flakes and they were dancing around in front of my headlights. The air smelled in that very clean, odorless way that only happens on a cold snowy night. And then, on top of it all, that not-unpleasant but slightly stinging sensation of the flakes striking my face as I walked to from the car to my final destination made me grin like a school kid. What I realized, what made me so happy, was that it simply felt like winter.

‘What the heck?’, I thought. Really, I’ve had 20 winters in the last 10 years and one would think I’d be used to all of this. The problem is that I am, I’m very used to it, I love it, and I’ve missed it. A lot. The “winter” of 2015-16 was winter in name only, and we never really experienced all of the sensations of the season in the way that brings me joy. Yes, we skied and rode a bit. Yes, we did have a few cold days (anyone remember last Presidents’ Weekend!). But we never had a blanket of snow; never experienced that easy enjoyment of the season and it’s ever-so-slight inconveniences that slow us down and allow us to take the time to appreciate all of its beauty. And a proper winter in Vermont is especially beautiful.

Thus far, in just a few short weeks, Vermont has had more natural snowfall than we had during all of last winter. We’ve had sustained cold temperatures since the resorts opened in mid-November and it’s been ideal for our industry’s state-of-the-art snowmaking. The quality of the skiing and riding is as good as it’s ever been this early in the season, it’s still getting better daily, and there’s another storm in the forecast.

The 2015-16 season was the type that can run people out of the snowsports business altogether, it was a brutal test of our mettle and our commitment, and we’re all badly scarred by it. The true extent of the difficulty we all faced last winter is best expressed by just how much joy we all shared this past Monday. It was a real powder day, with enough dry, light snow falling on the mountains throughout the state that even the most jaded old industry pros were out there just being present, in the moment, forgetting last year’s woes and having a ball. The consensus among my friends and colleagues on Monday was that we are all still absolutely in love with skiing and riding. Oh man, do we still love it. All the more so given how badly we needed a reminder of just how good it can be.

This season began with the eyes of the entire ski racing world focused on our little corner of the world for the first time in a generation, and with our people’s passion for the mountains on display for all to see. The success of the FIS World Cup races at Killington reaffirmed our motto “Winter in its original state”, and after last winter’s difficulties that reaffirmation was as much for ourselves as anyone.

What we do in the mountains of Vermont in winter, who we do it with, and the way in which we do it is an expression of who we are. So far this winter, being able to express ourselves in that way without reservation has been remarkably therapeutic and deeply appreciated by all of us. Soon, during the December holidays, we all hope to provide as many guests as we can with the same reminder we’ve been enjoying. And if that means more turns in abundant natural snow for me, I’ll be all the better for it!

Taking the Weight Off My Shoulder ... Season

Body in off-season, feet on snow. Last week.

Normal people refer to the season in between summer and winter as “fall”, with “spring” on the other end of the year. Here in Vermont, we also refer to them as “stick season” and “mud season” respectively, which are accurate descriptions of the hillsides up here. Those of us who ski and snowboard year-round and never have summer simply refer to them, inclusively, as “shoulder season”.

Like all seasons, we can wax poetic about shoulder season being a time of renewal, a representation of the cycle of life and our place in the world, and the rhythm of the natural world. Over the last several years, my view of shoulder season has been a bit more pedestrian, and necessarily so. It’s been a time of intense administrative effort. A time to get the very big and very complex business of snow sports teaching either up and running or wound down and planned for the following year. Fall in particular is about getting the entire organization up to speed from a standing start, involving a ton of disparate moving pieces, none of them simple and most of them people. Not this year. This year, I’m squarely back in metaphor-land, shoulder season as a gradual transition of place, work, rest and activity, climate, culture, cuisine, time zone. This year also, the transition involves turning my attention to a wonderful combination of new and old details and activities, each of them familiar but all put together in new and different ways for a fresh start in the new season.

Having decided mid-way through my “summer winter” in New Zealand to leave behind management for the time being, my timetable and the way I experience the seasons is now quite different. It is far less rushed, the transition is far longer, and it is far less busy. I continued to work at Cardrona through the end of the NZ season and then remained in Wanaka for a couple of weeks to do, uhh, stuff. After a wonderful spring of skiing in the brilliant Kiwi sunshine and getting to experience the joys of an easy wind-down to an extraordinarily busy season, I’m pretty confident that I did in fact do some stuff down there. I can’t exactly put my finger on all of the stuff, but it definitely included some fun dinner parties, some nice walks in the hills, and a couple of road trips with good friends. I’m pretty sure. Oh, I may have occasionally drank beer in the sunshine on the deck of our house, and if that happened I’m pretty sure that we would have taken the time to watch the sun drop below the mountains in the distance. It would have been important. Regardless of how acute my recollection may or may not be, all of the stuff I may have done (or not done) definitely was healthy for my mind, body and spirit.

In one respect, this shoulder season is a toughy. Spring in Wanaka is stunning (oh man, it’s shocking down there) and I arrived home to Vermont post-foliage, post- warm weather, and pre-ski season. Still, it’s great to be home, in my own house, drinking brewed coffee, with easy access to decent sandwiches and excellent burritos, driving on the right side of the road, and sleeping in my own bed. More importantly, as I look ahead to winter, I’ll stay here at home, in my own home, in Ludlow.

After four successful and rewarding seasons as Director at Sugarbush, I’ll remain in Ludlow, work for the Okemo Ski & Ride School (not far from my front door), and generally give myself a break to enjoy the simple life of working as an instructor and coach. That happiness thing, it’s pesky, but I think I’m on to it. The longer, easier shoulder season seems, forgive me, to have taken the weight off my shoulders.

The only folks unhappy about my choice to remain home are the field mice. They apparently had their run of the house this summer winter, but in winter winter it is my domain and they’d better watch out.

Mishegoss in The Mountains

The view up the hill behind my house in Ludlow, Vermont

It’s mishegoss, I’m telling you. Snow sports teaching, as an industry, is crazy. We face a litany of issues for our long-term viability: climate change, the hyper-competitive market for discretionary vacation dollars, the behemoth Rocky Mountain corporation gobbling up resorts and having a disproportionate effect on all of us (wasn’t the asking price for Whistler about 10 zillion simoleans?) … I can go on. It seems that every time I attend an event for us management-types or get into a discussion through PSIA about the health of the profession, it turns into a hand-wringing, doomsday exercise. Let’s face it, on a microeconomic level, ski teaching is a brutal way to make a living. We remain devoted through it all because instructors generally are a passionate bunch, our guests really do love it and, seriously, we didn’t get into this to become wealthy.

Still, there is a lot of good news out there, I’m truly optimistic we’ll be OK, and the proof for me lies in some surprising places. Why the rosy mindset, particularly during stick season? Well, because I’m in the middle of some serious administrative drudgery right now, and it’s gotten me excited for my upcoming season dedicated to our craft. Yes, that’s some serious mishegoss, but please let me explain.

The managers of the Okemo Ski & Ride School have taken pity on me by sliding me some work to get me through stick season. Wanting to be useful, I identified what I thought would be the best thing for me to do to make their lives easier and it’s the worst eye exam of a paperwork task that snow sports schools have to endure each fall. Yes, folks, it’s inputting instructor schedules into the computer scheduling and sales system. With software upgrades and web access, this is a lot easier than it used to be, but it’s still grunt work nonetheless. Each individual instructor submits their work days for the entire season; each has to be reviewed to make sure the needs of the school and their guests are likely to be met; and each has to be input manually so the sales staff and supervisors can do their jobs.

Vermont’s major resorts - Okemo, Sugarbush, Stratton, Mount Snow, Killington and Stowe - all have over three hundred instructors in their schools, the vast majority of whom work part-time for the season. Full-time schedules are easy: they pick the same day off each week, and they otherwise work every day and don’t get days off during the busy periods. Part-time staff schedules are another story altogether. Part-time instructor schedules can look a bit like they were placed on a tree during deer hunting season and shot through with buckshot. There’s no criticism there - these part-time folks have other conventional careers, kids in school and all kinds of family obligations or are in college themselves, have long drives to the resort and, seriously, normal lives that make it tough to sacrifice their weekends and holidays for six months a year in order to do wedge turns in our frigid Green Mountain winters. And seriously, just imagine a college kid who sacrifices all of the vacation time to work outside in the cold while making less money than they could at Starbucks and you get the idea. This is precisely why putting the part-time staff schedules into the system can be genuinely inspirational. Yep, it’s time to look up “mishegoss” in your Yiddish dictionary.

Here’s the point, finally. Schedule after schedule of part-time instructors are actually pretty simple. They include virtually every weekend all winter with one or two set aside for the “real world”, a PSIA update or some freeski time, and then a few mid-week days during the busy December holidays or Presidents Week. Boom, done. Some of these people have drives to Vermont as long as three or four hours every time they want to put their skis or boards on their feet, and yet they’ll be there at lineup and in the morning training clinics rearing to go, enthusiastic, and spreading the joy to our guests without flinching. It’s downright amazing, and that’s without even considering that they do all of it without any profit motive, which I’m sure would leave my undergraduate economics professors speechless.

Sure, these folks are getting older. Yes, I’d love to see many of them become a bit more open to continuing their evolution as skiers, riders and teachers. Of course, I wish that a greater number of them were equally dedicated young folks, filled with a passion for teaching snow sports and to their own ongoing, continuing professional development. More importantly, I do very much wish it were easier to keep the many amazing young folks we do have working in the industry – we need to hang onto them with two hands and give them every opportunity we can to succeed (a/k/a serve the Kool-Aid but not let it result in professional sugar crashes). Still, what these part-time instructors do and their thankless dedication to it cannot be underestimated and shouldn’t be left unappreciated. Ever.

Every Friday night this winter, the highways of the northeastern United States will be filled with an enormous number of dedicated instructors (and coaches, park staffs, lifties, patrollers, etc.) on their way to their second jobs in the mountains that they really love. I used to joke that if you want to see the best collection of race coaches I knew, sit in a booth at the Friendly’s restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts all night on a Friday night in winter, and they’ll be wandering in for a mid-trip hot meal on their way north. We are all working very hard to solve the vexing issues in our industry, but our hard-working part-time pros are the beating heart of it and they’re keeping it all together. It shows in their paperwork, plain and simple. And I may need another cup of coffee before doing the next batch of schedules.

A Rolling Stone Gathers No … Stitches?

The view from along the Cardrona Road today, September 14.

One of my graduate school professors had a game he liked to play, just for fun. If you presented him with a pithy aphorism, he’d respond with another one that had precisely the opposite meaning as the first. Try it: good fences make good neighbors; a rolling stone gathers no moss; a stitch in time saves nine; and, my current favorite, for every complex question there’s a simple answer that’s wrong. While I’m in New Zealand, I become acutely aware of the volume of folksy American expressions in my everyday speech, and I’ve been thinking about Professor Paul’s game a bit to entertain myself.

Today, as I enjoy a rare second consecutive day out of ski boots, enjoying the sunshine in town, the two somewhat competing maxims that come to mind are “the devil is in the details” and “Heaven shows itself one detail at a time”. In the dark days of the early part of the New Zealand winter, each detail seems to confirm winter’s wintery-ness. Wake up in a cold house, eat breakfast in a down coat, leave the house in the dark of night and return long after sunset, always clothed in layers like an onion. “Turn on the bed”, for crying out loud, meaning give the electric blanket a bit of time to warm the sheets before getting in and hunkering down for the night. In spring, it’s quite the opposite, and with each passing day more details emerge to help us appreciate having moved on from the depth of winter. First, we can actually see our colleagues as we wait for the early morning staff transport. Then, we observe the street lights turn off as we stand waiting. Then, the sun is above the horizon when we arrive at work. We don sunglasses when we arrive at the resort, and then need them first at the bottom of the access road and eventually in town on the way there. Now, after returning to town at the end of the day, it’s actually not the end of the day – the sun remains up for a while, warming us as we enjoy the stunning spring views across Lake Wanaka from town. In September, the great statistic is that we add something in the neighborhood of six additional minutes of sunlight every day here in Wanaka, and we certainly can tell. As they say here in New Zealand, that’s awesome with an “o”.

All of this is particularly meaningful for me this year. Over the past several Southern Winters seasons, I’ve had to leave Wanaka in early September to head home and begin working in Vermont. Not this year. This year, I get to experience the slow wind-down from a very busy ski season and make the most of a proper Kiwi spring. I’ve moved on from my Director position at Sugarbush and aim to make the most of the decision, beginning with getting my flip-flops some badly needed outside time. Notably, the best thing about walking around in flip-flops is that to do so safely requires moving slowly, which is part of the point.

It’s been a banner season for me teaching skiing at Cardrona Alpine Resort, and I’ll continue working through early October and then remain here in Wanaka for a couple of weeks. Some travel, some hiking, and lots of time contemplating my next move (a/k/a my continuing tour of the cafes of Wanaka) is all in the cards. After all, how can I adequately pay attention to the many glimpses of Heaven that show themselves every day here, one at a time, if I’m in a rush to leave. You’ll just have to speak a bit louder because the birds in my neighborhood are creating quite a racket this morning. They must be the early birds ...