The good word came down this afternoon – we are extending our winter season at Park City Mountain Resort for one more week – now closing on April 19, instead of three days from now, on April 12! It’s kind of odd because I feel at once happy to get the opportunity for another week of local, lift-served skiing, but also a bit bummed, in that I’ve already lined up everything I needed to do for the end of the season and even had a good chunk of my check-list already complete.
I think it’s for the best, because I took the above photo just over a week ago in some of the sweetest conditions of the year (nice turns RD). And, it just doesn’t seem right to be closing after getting about eight feet of new snow in the past two weeks.
So, if you’re lucky enough to be in Park City and up on the mountain during our extra week next week, please say a “thanks” to the person bumping your chair, or checking your ticket because although I know they’re happy to be working an extra week, they were also planning on doing something completely different just a few hours ago!
Nope, I’m not referring to the mini-rally on Wall Street. I’m referring to the fact that I’m ‘recovering’ from helping to put on one of the biggest events of our season, the IDPC (Intelligent Design at Park City). After spending most of Thursday through Saturday away from my desk, I’m just about to caught up, so I thought that I’d post a video showing highlights from the event (it really was quite cool – jumps, to jibs, to superpipe, to quarterpipe):
I spent practically the entire afternoon today in back-to-back meetings and felt as if I were going backwards instead of forwards. However, it’s awfully hard to even think about complaining about a day that starts off like this:
I guess it just goes to say that working for a ski resort is not without some benefits!
(updated 2/13/09, updated the Vopod link, for some reason the one I first put up ‘broke’, please leave me a comment if that happens again)
The Park City Mountain Resort blog that I helped to launch, and am a contributor to, was reviewed today by social media guru Mack Collier as part of his Company Blog Checkup series and I’m happy to say that we did came out pretty darn good! Of course, I wish we could have aced the “check up,” but I knew that our blog could use some improvement and also that I’m not always the one to see the changes that could or should be made. Here’s the summary that Mack gave us:
Content: 27 (Out of a possible 35) – I like how the blog is currently positioned to cover the current slope conditions. I would like to see more videos as I think these are also a promotional vehicle for the resort.
Comments: 31 (Out of a possible 35) – Very active comments section. I’m not completely sold on bloggers replying directly to each comment in the comment, but the sheer volume of comments from the readers, and the promptness of replies from the bloggers, is impressive.
Posting Schedule: 8 (Out of a possible 15) – Looks to be decent now, but big gaps in the offseason, would try to work on closing those.
Sidebars: 10 (Out of a possible 15) – Pics of the bloggers at top of blog makes this score. Also like the weather-related links.
Total Score: 76 (Out of a possible 100)
The rest of the post is very informative too and has given me some great ideas for continuing to evolve and improve our blog.
It’s well worth mentioning that the reason Mack reviewed our blog, was because of a referral from his friend Sean Howard, who had written a post called The Role of Messy in Social Media on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog on which I had left a comment. Sean looked up our blog, thought that Mack might like to review it, and was kind enough to pass along a note which got the ball rolling. This just affirms what I’ve been learning about social media and the people that participate in it – they’re really cool!
Shot this morning, (you can catch a glimpse of me skiing in the red coat behind Nikki)…thanks to Erik for shooting and editing, Dogger for guiding, Matt and Nikki for modeling, JT, Allison and Steph for driving and Billy for letting us get up there!
Hooray – I got in two runs yesterday morning on our opening day at Park City Mountain Resort. They weren’t full length runs, as I was up with our videographer (great video by Erik Hutchins) and also had a camera and was taking some photos myself (BTW the guy on the right side of this photo has struck the same pose two years running). But it was great to get some sliding in and satisfy myself that the season is ‘officially’ on!
In truth, this has been a slow starting winter for us and much of the Rocky Mountain region. We’ve had unseasonably warm weather and little snow, which leads to a bit of a challenge for a resort marketer, particularly in today’s challenging economic times. At least with the resort open, we now have a positive and tangible message to start putting out, I just hope it snows (a lot) and soon – see you on the slopes!
The good word came down this afternoon – we are extending our winter season at Park City Mountain Resort for one more week – now closing on April 19, instead of three days from now, on April 12! It’s kind of odd because I feel at once happy to get the opportunity for another week of local, lift-served skiing, but also a bit bummed, in that I’ve already lined up everything I needed to do for the end of the season and even had a good chunk of my check-list already complete.
The 
Hooray – I got in two runs yesterday morning on our opening day at Park City Mountain Resort. They weren’t full length runs, as I was up with our 
