Snow Business: Vail-Okemo Era Begins With A Stellar December

LUDLOW, CT — December was supposed to be a crossroads month at Okemo Mountain Resort. It was the first month that reality hit with longtime owners Tim and Diane Mueller selling Okemo to Vail Resorts and Vail executives meeting the snow sports media and the public at large on the hill for the first time.

It also marked a major conversion to the Epic Pass system.

Well, after a trip to Okemo's annual media weekend mid-month, it's safe to say that all seems to be well and that — conditions wise — it was arguably the best December in memory. Okemo certainly seems primed for a stellar 2018-19 season.

Let's address the conditions. Forget about that melted snow (rrr--n ... ugh ... just can't type it) that fell in buckets throughout Connecticut last week. Things are good up north. It was midday on Dec. 8 when Okemo Mountain Operations Director Eb Kinney walked into a luncheon with a smile on his face. Mother Nature had been kind to central Vermont, he quipped, and Okemo's powerful snowmaking system began laying down a surface a month earlier.

That was on Nov. 6 to be exact, he said. By the time freezing runners finished the Manchester Road Race in zero-degree conditions on Thanksgiving morning, Okemo already had a workable base down.

Eb is a snowmaker and a groomer by trade and he never pulls punches in describing the conditions. So when he said good, that meant good. Even at the far left of Okemo at Jackson Gore, things looked like, well, mid-season, and snow can't be made over there until the first of December because the bears' annual November trek to their winter hotel or whatever they do passes through the trail system.

That day Okemo had 65 trails and 12 lift open. The trails simply skied well, there's no other way to describe it. Like Eb, there is no need to disguise anything here. The entire scene just made one want to ski and ride. To begin the Christmas holiday week, the trail and lift count was up to 83 and 15.

Now, about this Vail thing. Vail Resorts Northeast Chief Operating Officer Doug Pierini knows the East and has ties to Connecticut, a major market to Okemo. Like with Vail's previous purchase of Stowe, Okemo had all the infrastructure — and personality — in place, he said.

"The footprint is quite different from the Okemo I skied in the '90s," he said. "Vail is particular with what it purchases. Okemo was attractive to Vail, especially with what the Muellers had done. We do not want that individuality to go away and you'll likely see more stay the same than change."

Pierini was referring to housing all over the mountain, a state-of-the-art snowmaking system and things like a heated six-person orange bubble chairlift already in place. But Vail did announce a $180 million capital investment plan for its acquistions (remember, Okemo's parent company, Triple Peaks LLC included owning Crested Butte in Colorado and running Mount Sunapee for the state of New Hampshire). At Okemo, that means a series of upgrades to the Sugar House, a mid-station lodge above the clock tower area that really is as throwback to the 1990s resort Pierini remembers.

There are no immedtate plans for more real estate development, he said.

A few pre-Christmas customers at New England Ski & Scuba in Vernon recently expressed concern about that new "corporate ownership." But at the same time, they purchased new skis and snowboards because they were "ready to go."

The response is, just go. Things seem to be working out at Okemo and conditions are good so far up north.

So just go and enjoy the conditions.

Photo Credit: Martin Griff

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Chris Dehnel is a Patch editor and past-president of the Eastern Ski Writers Association. He has been writing about snow sports since the 1990s. #OkemoMedia18