For the last four years, in various forms, I’ve been telling a story. A story about having how lucky I’ve felt to ski mountains like Vail and Snowbasin and Heavenly and Stowe.

Yet, ask me to list my favorite days on snow and you’ll get names like:

• Song Mountain, NY
• Nordic Valley, UT
• Ski Cooper, CO
• Granby, CO
• Howelson Hill, CO

It can be weird sometimes in this industry to truly love skiing at small ski areas more than big mountains. It goes so directly against virtually every marketing message we send. That bigger is better, real skiers ski big mountains, and anything short of 1,500 acres will leave your bored and heading for the car by lunch.

Another Way
It’s like I can hear music that nobody else does. Here I am, sitting in my car jamming out to an awesome song, but everyone on the street can’t hear the music and only sees some crazy dude losing his mind.

Well, not everyone.

You should watch the whole thing, but the crux is this line.

“Pete’s changed my life, 100%. The first time I saw someone go up that tow, everything made sense. And I was like, this is going to be my home.”

The context, in blog-post-bullet-point form, goes something like this:

• Ian Compton is an incredible skier
• He rises to the top of his sport
• But a serious injury keeps him sidelined for a long time
• During this time, he starts to discover there’s a better way for him to live
• He meets people who help him along the way
• Culminating with the discovery of a tiny ski hill that leads to the quote above

The Antidote
Small skiing is the perfect solution to so many of the challenges our industry believes could be holding us back. Price, proximity, danger, difficulty, you name it.

I truly believe that what it will take to change the perception is core skiers discovering what Ian has discovered. That there’s another way to enjoy this sport that’s just as good, if not better, than the original.

And then telling their stories.

So I’ll finish where I began. What does our industry need? A lot more stories like this one.

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.