This summer our little family of four has found ourselves on the trails of Powder Mountain over and over again. As far as I can discern, the reasons, mixed with the fact we love to hike, are three-fold:

1. Powder mountain is roughly 3,500′ higher than us which gives us a nice break from the summer heat.
2. They have a few trails we really enjoy.
3. But we keep learning of new trails we haven’t yet explored but would like to.

Now keep in mind Pow Mow is fairly quiet in the summer. More and more mountain bikers are discovering their trails, but there is no hotel to fill or mountain coaster to promote. It’s simply a beautiful mountain in a beautiful place.

But as I wandered around a closed-for-the-summer lodge on a hike last week, I noticed that not only were the trail map boxes full, they were full of summer trail maps.

One, Two, and…
As one who frequents resorts in the summer (when our clan does most of our traveling and exploring), this is much rarer than you’d expect. So, to me, that was Win #1. We’ve played disc golf at resorts with zero clue where to go after just 1 or 2 holes because we couldn’t find a map.

Once I opened the map, however, I found Win #2 as the design did away with the lengthy copy, tables of prices and stock-looking photos, and replaced them with a clean, easy-to-follow grid of their trails and trail system and nothing more.

In fact, the only real words were on the back in the form of a simple guide to summer activities.

Our questions about what other trails to try, where to start from. how to get there, etc. were all answered in these simple diagrams.

I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed this simple approach. As one of those people who notices, collects, and reads way too many resort brochures, this simple approach was a nice departure from the typically busy norm.

…Three
But the thing I like the most about this brochure was the cover. And not the whole cover (though the design is lovely), but the feature shown in the photo.

That is called the Paper Airplane.

This rideable sculpture has a trail named after it, a race series based off of it, and when you talk about one-unique-thing that gives non-core visitors a reason to come or experiences that are just begging to be shared, it’s hard to argue with it’s ability to do both.

Powder Mountain is doing some big exciting things right now, but one of my favorites is this simple, savvy approach to summer marketing that took something lots of people like (a beautiful mountain), added something that improves the ability for people to enjoy it (a well-planned trail system), gave even non-traditional users a fun reason to come (a giant metal paper airplane), and told the story of all in one clean, tidy package.

Very nice work.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.