Burke take 2/cook off skate jam

So this week we went back to Burke to put the seat pads on the chair of the old lift. At first this seemed like a daunting task but one we got rolling with it, it went pretty quickly I believe we did it in a hour and 35 minutes.
Then on Saturday we had the cook off and skate jam, I thought this was a very successful event there seemed to me more people there then past years, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. So I would give the event a A.

Bretton Woods/Loc clean up day

For this week we traveled to Bretton Woods for our final tour of possible practicum locations. When there we met with quite a few people for different departments. I liked seeing the inside of the snow making building, I was really surprised to see how much the snow additive costs ( $100 a bag). We also got a tour of the Mount Washington Hotel, the hotel was built in 1902 and you really do feel like your walking back in time when you walk in to the building. Two things that really stood out the me here were the roof top garden with all the plants from the top of Washington, and the cave bar which was a prohibition era bar.
Also this week we had our clean up day at the LOC I must say I was a little disappointed in the turn out from our class. We did however get a good amount of trail cut and brush moved.

Burke Mountain

This week we traveled to our local mountain, Burke. I worked on the mountain most of the summer for the Burke Bike Park, so I had seen a lot of the construction that has been going on. I was interested to hear about some more of the further plans such as moving the old fixed grip lift over to East Bowl. It was also really cool to get up close to the wind tower I had driven past it a few times but it is much more impressive up close. Now we just need some snow so we can enjoy that new 7 min. lift ride up top!

New England Ski Museum

For this week our field trip brought us to the New England Ski Museum at Cannon Mountain. The exhibit that they had when we were there was on the history of the ski resort industry. The first section of the exhibit  had a good video depicting some of the history of skiing, I enjoyed seeing some of the film of the old time skiing in New England. The other display that I really enjoyed was Bodie Miller's Olympic medals. After we toured the museum we had a power point presentation that went in depth in to the history of skiing in New England, once again I liked seeing the photos of how the ski resort industry has changed. After the museum we were able to take a ride up the tram to the top of cannon, it was just to bad that the weather was not to nice and we could not enjoy the view from the top to the mountain.

NE Snow Sports Summit

For this week we went to the NE snow sports summit at Sunday River. I found this to be a very cool trip getting to meet with alot of people from the industry, and sit in on some good lectures. For me the best part was being able to sit in the new Piston Bully 400's and seeing all the new technology that has gone in to them. The one thing that I would have liked is if the ski areas had booths as well so it would have been easeir to meet some GM's from mountains.

Five questions:
1) How did you get in the ski resort industry? - Bryan from AMI signs - company started making stuff for amusement parks and have expanded in the the ski resort industry.
2) How has your business been effected by the economic down turn? - Doug from Cameron compressors - About two years ago they felt a hit, but now they are rebounding with most of their sales going over seas.
3) Do you have any advice for someone looking to get in to the industry? - Mike for RAMP - Start by just getting a foot in the door on a entry level job in a field that you are interested in and stay with it even when the going gets tough.
4) What way do you feel that the industry is trending? - Jennifer from Ski Prism - Things are really going to a much more technology reliant society and e-ticketing.
5) Is your company doing anything to be involved with summer operations? - Patti from Leitner Poma - Yes we have started making bike carriers for our chair lifts.

One Week Down

It was nice to start gettin to "work" this week. I like the idea that we are goin to be running the Lyndon Outing Club, I think it will be a good way to learn some of the ins and outs of running a ski hill. And since LOC is a smaller place I feel like we will be able to do more then if we were working for a large resort like Stowe. For my group work I will be working on trail maintenance, which is a field or the industry that I am interested in. The groups first priority is to get all the brush and blow-downs cleared from the trails, for this hopefully we will be gettin help from the freshmen classes. Over all it seems like it should be a fun year.

First Post

Just set up the blog for practicum class. Looking forward to learning the ins and outs of the resort industry.