Sometimes “thank yous” can seem a bit manufactured and/or obligatory, but I want to be clear that these are anything but.
Not to make too much jest of the following, genuine ‘thank yous’ but I thought for a second to do the Snoop Dog version of thanks. You know, “I’d like to thank ME for…”
Seriously though, first things first – I want to thank ALL of the ski resorts. I’ve done this website for 23 seasons now and you know – I am not certain that I’ve ever thanked them as a whole. I mean, sure I’ve singled some out from time to time, but the truth is without you guys offering your particular version of a mountain of fun, this website wouldn’t exist. So consider this a long overdue, thank you to all (17) ski areas for “being there” and doing what you do to give all of the rest of us a great time.
Additionally thanks for providing free passes for our team to be there on the mountain and share those experiences with our readers. Thanks for allowing us to give away some freebies to readers to grow that audience.
The Pinnacle of Thanks: Snowshoe Mountain
I want to thank Snowshoe Mountain for being our top marketing partner. Beginning with Joe Stevens and Bruce Petitt, followed by Bill Rock, Frank DeBerry and all of the fantastic marketing staffers that I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know – such as Laura Parquette, David Dekema and others in between…to the current team of Patti Duncan, Mikey Valache, Shawn Cassell, Rachel Fanning, Heather Ransom, and to longtime friends like Ed Galford…you are all awesome partners and friends. Thanks for being great to me personally and to our SkiSoutheast family – including all who have made it out to the Summits each season. (This year’s was a blast.) Again, thank you all. Year after year you guys set the standard and we appreciate your support and participation.
Top Partners Indeed! Canaan Valley Resort, Omni Homestead Resort
Thank you to Steve Drumheller at Canaan Valley Resort and Lynn Swann at The Homestead. You guys know what you do for us here at SkiSoutheast and ResortCams and we appreciate you greatly. Steve, putting Justin Harris onto the daily mountain reports was a genius move on your part and he ran with it.
We definitely appreciate your involvement with all we do here and we need to do more to grow that even more for 2019-2020.
Lynn, the “Beyond the Tower” podcasts were epic. Those provided an insider’s take on the people and the stories that make up that one-of-a-kind resort. Awesome style.
Our Core Partners Every Season: Winterplace Resort, Timberline Resort, Massanutten Resort, Wintergreen Resort, Ober Gatlinburg, Wisp Resort and the West Virginia Ski Areas Association.
Special Thanks again this season as you guys continue to support what we do here at SkiSoutheast, ResortCams and our weather content.
Thank each of you for being a SkiSoutheast.com / ResortCams.com Member Resort. Without you guys we would not be able to share the LIVE cams and content across the region. We appreciate your long-term support and collaboration with what we do here. You guys rock.
Winterplace Resort – We appreciate you Terry Pfeiffer, Tom Wagner, Missy Cline and the crew at Winterplace. You guys make our jobs easy! Tom, those “This Week at Winterplace” videos are awesome and you guys need to keep cranking them out. Push them to Facebook for sure.
Timberline Resort – I will catch some heat from this, but I don’t care – thank you to Tracy Edmonds Herz and her team at Timberline Resort for being a SkiSoutheast Sponsor/Member Resort and for streaming the LIVE cam with us at ResortCams.com. We appreciate your support. We certainly hope to see brighter days ahead for the resort.
Massanutten Resort – Thank you to Steve Showalter and his great crew. Kenny Hess, brother, you are appreciated. It was really awesome to watch the ‘Nut crew up their game on social media this season. Keep those photos and videos coming! The Snow Moon Festival and the Northern Lights tubing were great martketing concepts. We look forward to bigger and better things ahead!
Wintergreen Resort – Betsy Dunkerton and the entire crew at Wintergreen always make our jobs easy. Thanks for all the great content on the Mountain Blog, the awesome images and some of that drone footage was sweet this season. Thanks again for your support and collaboration.
Ober Gatlinburg – Kate Barrido, I really appreciate you, Bruce Anders and the entire team for coming on board and supporting SkiSoutheast these last several seasons. The new cameras are great and we really appreciate all you do to share press releases and to keep us informed. As you know, Gatlinburg as been a special place to me for decades and we appreciate you. Coming through those tough times with the fires back in 2017 was crazy and yet you guys are even stronger.
The WV Ski Areas Association – I get to thank Joe Stevens, Terry Pfeiffer and all of the West Virginia resort owners twice here! You deserve it for jumping in and sponsoring all we do here with your support. I thank you.
Wisp Resort – To Lori Zaloga at Wisp, thanks sister for assisting with some getaways this season. I want to get back up there myself…and soon. I love the vibe up in Garrett County and all of the sweet activities that are offered there. The family feel of that resort still remains and the investment to great success is evident all over the mountain. Your Mountain Blog and the Snow Report are among the most insightful in the region. I would love to help get more photos, videos and social input coming out of the McHenry area. The new cameras around the area pointed at Wisp were great this season. We heard a ton of comments about them and know that you guys did as well. Hope we can work together to get a couple more streaming up there this summer.
Thanks for Joining Us This Season! Cataloochee Ski Area!
Obviously we have always shared all the news that is the news coming from Tammy Brown, Chris Bates and the entire Cat Crew, but we really appreciate them coming fully on board as a marketing partner in 2018!
Those new cameras have rocked all season and we look forward to getting one up at Hemphill. What a set of views that will provide. We appreciate your commitment to supporting what we do here and we’ll always do our part to grow that trust. We hope to grow our mutual outreach next season with an even stronger commitment to more photos, videos and social content coming from Maggie Valley!
My Home Base: Beech Mountain Resort
Everyone has their home base. For me personally, I really have three to choose from…even if one of those doesn’t choose us. The other two are both awesome choices in Appalachian Ski Mountain and Beech Mountain Resort. We play at both a couple of times per season and I love being at both. However, my home mountain of Beech Mountain Resort gets the ‘lean’ from me. They were the first ski area in the region (after the now closed Hawksnest) to begin working with me on the old SkiNC website.
Our design firm does their website, we host it, we have two LIVE cams on the mountain (and want to do more). Man as far back as I can remember from Sheila Fletcher, to Wayne Hoilman, to Gil Adams to Ryan Costin, Talia Freeman and the crew now guiding Beech Mountain…we have always worked together in some fashion. I remember back in 1996 when we rescued the website from the two kids who left the mountain and took the website with them! We’ve done a lot of ticket and vacation giveaways together. We’ve raised money for the daughter of a fallen ski patrol member; we’ve sponsored events that supported Boarding for Breast Cancer (B4BC) (which has hit close to home for me recently).
Thank you for growing that support and mutual collaboration this season. Your support is appreciated.
Webcam Partners: Bryce Resort & Wolf Ridge Resort
We appreciate you guys as well. It’s great to be able to share the awesome views this and every season. We look forward to doing more together in the coming seasons.
We certainly appreciate the collaboration of giving some lift tickets away over the years. We would really love to provide whatever assistance is needed to get more input from both of these great resorts. Information was simply “tight” coming out of Bryce and Wolf this season.
We have to thank Bill Nabers of the Bryce Resort patrol for providing some input and imagery as that was about it this season.
Gotta Mention The Rest of Our ‘Homies’: Appalachian Ski Mountain & Sapphire Valley Resort
We placed LIVE cams at Appalachian and Sapphire several years ago and we continue to host those streams as our way to say thank you for being willing to provide us with season passes.
Thank you for that collaboration as well – as it does allow us to show how great the conditions are on the mountain. We hope to grow those partnerships in the future.
Thanks to Our Many Advertising Partners
Without YOU, there would be no US. We think we’ve stepped up our game in a huge way this season with 1.6 million more visitors and viewers this season than ever before. Nearly 9 million visitors hit us up this season. We also had a record outreach on Facebook this season. We thank you for being awesome supporters as well. We are already making plans to grow things even better and more interactive than ever for next season. Just wait!
…and Now, Our Team…
Joe Stevens – Long ago in a far distant past, my buddy Joe Stevens reached out to me when I was still working out of the basement of my house and he invited me up to a media weekend that he was hosting at Snowshoe Mountain. I was one of only three guys posting a website at that media weekend. But Joe and I hit it off and even after he left Snowshoe, our friendship continued to grow. Gotta be honest here, if I was getting ready to purchase a ski resort, Joe would be one of the first people I’d call. He’s tireless and he’s the best mouth for the industry. Joe’s been a part of our writing team now since 2005. Crazy how time flies. But thank you so much Joe for being in my ear all the time and thank you and Angie for posting the Snow News is Good News all these years now. I hope that new hip is bionic and that you can get down to the lake this summer. Christian would love it.
Kenny Griffin – KenDog, can you believe it’s been nearly nine years since you graduated from UNC Charlotte, with a degree in meteorology and joined our team?
Kenny has been the chief FirsTrax and snow report blogger since he joined us until this 2018-2019 season. He was still involved more than you guys know this season and we would not be as “stoked” to do this website without Kenny as a part of the team. Kenny is also a VERY important “DUDE” for us at Appnet and all of our websites kind of depend on theKenDog! Thank you Kenny…for being you. I know it’s hard to find time for SkiSoutheast with all the duties we throw at you, but we’ll always find a way to keep you in the mix.
Brad Panovich – Talk about “tireless”. Look that word up in Webster’s and his photo is right there. Between his duties as the Chief Meteorologist at WCNC Newschannel 36 in Charlotte; his social media presence with a kazillion followers; his “Man of the Year” status in the community of Charlotte, North Carolina AND his posting LIVE Skier’s Forecast Videos for us for more than ten years now!…I don’t know how he gets to see his wife and kids. Brad, do you remember calling me up to meet you and the Satellite truck over in Blowing Rock ions ago?!? Crazy huh? Seriously dude, you rock and we so appreciate all you do for us here at SkiSoutheastland.
Rudy Ryback – When Kenny needed a break, we put out an all-points-search for a new FirstTrax guy and we found a great fit in Rudy. He and I planned to get on the slopes together more this season, but circumstances and life got in the way of that. However, Rudy didn’t miss a beat in providing all of us with great, daily intel on what to expect at every mountain in the region this season. Thank you tons Rudy and I DO look forward to bigger and better things next winter. We should probably look into getting you involved more NOW with hiking, biking, whitewater and more.
Matt Laws, Amanda Kundert and Colette Winkler – These guys and gals are all members of my personal support staff and they also contributed a lot this season, behind the scenes on SkiSoutheast. Each posted content and Matt Laws posted weekly updates and emails to all of our partners to ensure they knew we were thinking about them. Amanda and Matt were also crucial in growing our social media outreach this season to more than DOUBLE anything we’ve done in prior seasons. We will be making greater use of your talents ahead. THANKS AGAIN for all you do.
David McCue – I left David for last, because David is leaving us for pursuits of adventure elsewhere. David’s colorful and expressive writing talents will be missed here at SkiSoutheast. David joined us four seasons ago and in that time his (59) posts were among my personal favorites. Thanks for being a great soul and adventure seeker David – and for sharing this short bit of time with us. We certainly wish nothing but the very best of success at wherever you land next. Watching you ride the snow makes me confident that you’ll land squarely on your skis, brother. All the best.
…We’d Never Forget YOU GUYS AND GALS.
Every season we seem to be able to hold on to almost all of our visitors and grow more. Thanks to you guys for spreading the word and work that we do here at SkiSoutheast.com. I remember 25 years or so ago publishing a local tourism magazine called “Your Key to the High Country” and we felt blessed when we got readership up to the 10,000 mark monthly. Now here we are with a reach in the millions over a four month season and another 2 million unique visitors via ResortCams.com over the remaining eight months of the year.
We appreciate all of the new connections we made this season with many new visitors reaching out and making your mark by sending us photos, videos, commentaries and more. We really are thankful for you, our viewers.
…and that will put a wrap on the season. Email me as you wish at [email protected]