It was a lovely spring morning in Utah. The sun was shining, temperatures in the valley started in the upper 40’s, a perfect day for being outside in short sleeves.

One of my favorite times to be in the mountains and let my pale flesh soak up much needed rays of sunshine, I wanted to see what content was winning the day on social media for nearby resorts and resorts in general.

So I used the new ranking tool, selected Twitter favorites for the last 7 days and in the #1 spot was…

The snake lives for one more day.#LongestSeasonInUtah pic.twitter.com/zAwaf4LdDz

— Snowbird (@Snowbird) June 11, 2017

And then I scrolled to #3…

Riding the wiggle waves off Shirley! #springskiingcapital pic.twitter.com/AA8B9vQAJS

— Squaw Alpine (@squawalpine) June 10, 2017

I think the temptation here is to focus just on the fact that skiing is so relevant in May. Why the white stuff is winning versus all the other marvelous things about spring and summer. But I’m going to save that for another day.

Instead, I want to talk about the other thing that was making people excited: the snake.

What If
Whenever I look up at the massive jump line at Snowbasin, I can’t help but ask two questions.

First, where is everybody? In an entire season of watching and waiting, I can count on one hand the number I people I saw hit the biggest jump.

But, second, what if all that snow and time and creativity and money were spent on creating terrain parks for the rest of us. A place where the snow was sculpted to create fun and unique sliding sensations for the people who don’t want to risk life and limb to do so.

Something like, I dunno, a curvy trench of snow formed, coincidentally, by the skiers rather than the resort.

Lessons Everywhere
You know how kids going off the sides of jumps is the bane of some riders’ existence? That should be a lesson in what skiers want, not a lesson in crowd control.

A lesson that, like these slushy slaloms, skiers enjoy things that give them a new experience.

We’ve done that for the park rats, maybe it’s time we do that for everyone else as well.

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.