Ski Resorts expect longer lift lines, fewer child care programs this year
With the ski season quickly approaching in the midst of a raging pandemic, Vermont’s ski areas will be faced with longer lift lines, limited child care services, and wide ranging COVID-19 precautions.
Parker Riehle, a Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum board member and President of Get on Snow, moderated a panel on Thursday Sept. 21 for leaders of various Vermont ski areas. The panel included Bill Cairns, the Director of Resort Operations at Bromley Mountain Resort, John Hammond, Vice President of Mountain Operations at Sugarbush Resort, and Bill Stritzler, the Managing Director at Smugglers’ Notch.
These resorts are focused on creating better online systems to manage indoor spaces, as well as add more outdoor spaces. None of these mountains will be requiring daily reservations to be able to come ski, like some other mountains out West.
Bromley Mountain will have contact free rentals, ticket boxes, and more outdoor spaces in order to adhere to the governor’s state COVID-19 safety guidelines. They’ll encourage people to boot up at their cars, instead of indoors, and limit the time people spend at tables during lunchtime to thirty or forty minutes, Cairns said.
“The pinch-point is noon… there will be a time management effort that has to happen during that time whether it’s thirty minutes at a table, or forty minutes at a table,” Cairns said.
Lift lines will likely be longer, Strizler of Smuggler’s Notch said. They will only let people from the same family or friend group ride the lift together, and nobody will have to ride a lift with another person.
“Try to come skiing with your friends and family,” Strizler said.
The busiest time of day is from 10am to 2pm, Strizler said. They are letting people know when lines are long to encourage early arrival times.
Similar to Bromley, Smugglers’ Notch will not be doing reservations, and they will also not be sending people home.
“Whatever our systems are, if we are not able to take care of your need right at this moment, we’ll find a way to take care of it without having to send you home,” Strizler said.
Sugarbush is entering their first winter fully on the IKON pass. The IKON pass is a season ski pass that includes access to over forty ski mountains across the U.S. West and Northeast including Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, Big Sky Resort in Montana, and various locations abroad including Tremblant in Quebec.
Instead of managing a reservation system like some mountains out west, they’ll regulate how many day passes are sold and make them available online for advanced purchase.
Similar to Smuggs and Bromley, they'll minimize the time skiers spend indoors via online systems for pre-ordering food and rental reservations.
Sugarbush also bought a food truck to provide more outdoor options.
Food could then be brought to an open-air seating area Sugarbush is installing, based on the “pool cabana model” to build small, outdoor huts that can serve as a family or group’s base camp throughout the day. They will only be able to finish six different huts before the start of the winter season, but it will limit the amount of people who need to go into the main lodge.
“You can rent your own little building in the base area so your family or group can rent this and that can be your home base,” Hammond said.
Bromley’s child care center will soon turn into an employee lunch space, Cairns said.
It was a tough decision to cut the child care programming, but these are the kinds of calls that need to be made, Cairns said. Smugglers’ Notch is still debating whether they will be providing their usual child care, but have changed protocols for their ski lessons and will require a parent’s help during classes with the youngest children.
“That way, any handling of the child can be done by the parent rather than the instructor” Strizler said.
Sugarbush plans to close their ski group instruction programs due to the high number of people that come from out of state, but they are still offering private instruction sessions. Additionally, they are only providing child care for children in the area in order to limit risk with out of state visitors.
All three leaders anticipate an influx of backcountry activity. For the most part, their backcountry policies are staying the same as previous years, but they advise people to follow the rules and be safe.
Vermont is the fourth largest ski state with over four million skier visits and ski season generates crucial revenue across the state, Riehle said. Although there are more people who visit throughout the summer, the winter season is the biggest revenue generator in Vermont, with skier visits generating over nine million dollars in spending.
These leaders have a cautious, but positive outlook on the season. “Everything that is good about skiing still remains good about skiing,” Cairns said.
This year Sugarbush is planning to open Nov. 21, and Bromley Mountain and Smugglers’ Notch are opening on Nov. 23.
