Standard Time should start On Time

Snow has been slow in coming to many western US ski resorts in the Fall of 2007. Forget global warming and La Nina. I think we should go back to having Daylight Savings Time end on the last Saturday of October instead of the first Saturday in November. The extra hour of daylight in the afternoons in early November may have messed up the winter storm track.

Ski Prices - Trip Prices

Premium Ski & Binding $1250

Spring Break trip to Snowmass, $1399
air, 6 nights, lodging, lifts and transfers, March 22 - 28, 2008

If people are willing to pay over $1200 for a pair of skis and binding, more than likely, they will want to use that equipment on a nice trip. A week long trip that costs $1400 - $1600 is probably within their price range.

Mary Harris moves to the Timberline

Mary Harris, who has been the General Manager of the Mountain Chalet in Snowmass, will be the new General Manager of the Timberline condos in Snowmass. Mary has done a great job at the Mountain Chalet and we can expect good things for the Timberline during her tenure at this property.

Partners In Group Sales 9.0 in Vail

The 9th annual Partners In Group Sales meeting was held in Vail, July 16 & 17. There were 32 participants from several major tour operators as well as many of the top resorts and lodging properties in Colorado.

Jacque Rossi of Vail Resorts was named the Supplier of the Year and Karri Willemssen of Western Seasons was named Rookie of the Conference.

Click here for a chart summarizing the average price of leisure ski group trips between 2003 and 2008.

The conference was produced by Mike Beltracchi and Eric Fullerton.

15 weeks for a new passport

After losing my passport while in Canada at the end of February and getting back into the US with relatively little problem, I applied for a new passport on March 28, 2007. The clerk at the Eagle, CO post office told me that I probably wouldn't have the new passport until at least the week of June 10. 15 weeks after I submitted the application, I finally received my new passport on July 21, 2007.

While the current system of health care delivery in the US has issues, a single provider system run by the government is probably not the answer to our ills. If the State Dept can't handle issuing a single document to US citizens, how can another branch of the government handle something as complex as health care?

With new passport in hand, hopefully I'll be off to Panama in September.

Doug Lofland, Casandra Foister, Stephen Hall, Erin Peck and Mike Beltracchi rode in the MS 150 from Denver to Ft. Collins on July 7 & 8. It was hot and dry, but we all survived. Casandra suggestd that next year we name our team, "How's your Aspen?"

Frontier to ski resorts, not just yet

Frontier Airlines has recently announced that they will start selling tickets on their new regional turboprop service to 4 new cities. However, there will be a delay before they potentially start selling tickets to cities such as Aspen (ASE) and Eagle (EGE).

Check, Check, Flex

May 10, 2007 Scheduled to fly Denver to Dulles to Jacksonville, FL on United Airlines

Check in on line and print boarding passes 24 hours in advance. Check.
Arrive at DIA 1.5 hours before flight at 4:30 am. Check.
Get to gate at 5:15 am, flight delayed by 1 hour for mechanical reasons. That meant the down line connection would be missed. Time to be flexible.

United was able to reroute me on a Delta flight that would leave DIA at 6:30 am and arrive in Jacksonville at 2:10 pm, 10 minutes earlier than my originally scheduled flight on United. The only catch, according to the UA agent, was that my checked bag probably wouldn't arrive with me at 2:10 pm. Should I take the 6:30 am flight on Delta or wait around DIA for a later UA flight so that I could travel with my bag. The simple answer was that was I going to go ahead and get to JAX as quickly as I could, as I had plans to meet friends for dinner. Sure enough, I arrived and my bag did not. I had dinner with my friends and then got my bag the next day. My moral of the story is: keep moving towards your final destination - your bags will show up sometime later. If necessary, one can make it for a few days in Florida with a new pair of shorts and a few new t-shirts.

Changing With The Times

Fred Blume has a run a trip for several years with the Pensacola Ski Club. The process had been to put the trip together in the spring, pay a deposit for the group and then start selling the trip during the summer. For his next trip to Vail, Feb 2 - 9, 2008, he decided to take advantage of an airfare of $235 from Pensacola to Denver on Delta Air Lines, which was about 40% less than the going rate for this market. The only catch was that the tickets had to be issued within 30 days of making the reservation on Delta. He sent out an e-mail to all of the past participants on his recent trips on May 1st. By the 2nd, he had 16 people signed up for his trip.

The market for participants for leisure ski groups, as well as skiers to destination resorts in general, is relatively static. It's neither growing or shrinking much. To succeed, a trip needs to keep its share of the market. To do that, one has to move quickly and stay ahead of the competition. As soon as Fred got the final deal together, he started promoting it to his people. The immediate results were very positive. He's well on his way to his goal of filling up the trip with 42 people.

An Older Guy with New Tricks

Joe Whyte will turn 76 in May, but he's still willing to make changes to make his annual trip to Snowmass, Dec 6 - 12, 2007, successful. For some reason that doesn't appear to be rational from the point of making money, United and Delta are selling seats from Philadelphia into Aspen for around $200 next winter, whereas seats into Denver are over $300. Since the Silvertree Hotel picks up at the Aspen Airport, Joe sent an e-mail to all of his people letting them know about this air deal. He'll sell them the land package and they will go out and get their own airfare. He took 80 people to Snowmass in December of 2006 and his goal is 106 in 2007. More than 50 people have already purchased their air in just 5 days, and this is prior to United loading their bigger planes into Aspen and before Frontier has even announced or loaded their potential flights into Aspen. It looks like Joe is on target to expand this trip to 100+ people this December. As Mike says, "Buy seats on the planes, not stock in the carriers."

Day 64 2006/07 season

After 63 days of skiing this season, was I crazy enough to go off the Cliffs under Chair 4 at Vail? The answer is yes. While I did not take the biggest line, I made it over and landed it and came up in one piece. I did this so that I could shoot a video of Andrew Thomas, 14, from Bloomfield, MI who talked his parents into letting him make the jump.

Some luck is required when traveling

The Little Mountain, Ltd group was supposed to leave Cleveland on Northwest Airlines on Saturday, April 7th to fly from Cleveland to Minneapolis to Eagle for a trip to Snowmass. Late Friday afternoon, their flight out of Cleveland on Saturday morning was "canceled due to crew work limitations." After several hours on the phone with the NW, the group was accommodated on several other flights on AA and UA and everyone made it to Snowmass by Saturday afternoon.

These folks fared better than another NW flight that was supposed to depart Las Vegas on Saturday morning, April 7th. According to national news reports, while the passengers were boarding the plane, the pilot having a conversation on his cellphone and was yelling obscenities and allegedly cursed at a passenger. The flight was canceled and people were re booked on other flights.

The moral of these two stories: no matter how much advance planning you do for a trip, be it for yourself or for a group, some luck is required for it to all run smoothly.

Air is starting to be loaded into the resort airports for next winter. Already, group space on many Saturday flights is gone. If you aren't randomly the first person to get through to the airlines' group desks the minute that the inventory becomes available, then everyone else is boxed out for the year. However, I had friends who just booked 5 frequent flyer tickets from Denver to Hawaii on April 9th for travel on April 13th, which looks to be a high travel spring break period. Sometimes there is what appears to be no rhyme or reason to booking airline seats.

A skier's lunch?

After a hard morning of skiing at Snowmass with several members of the Space Coast Ski Club, it was time for lunch at the Cafe Suzanne at the base of Elk Camp. This skier recharged his batteries with some vitamin water, ibuprofen and a beer. I'm not sure if this lunch is recommended by the USDA, but but this guy looks happy.