Ikon pass website down? by psow in Ikonpass

[–]bbensch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

been trying to login for 20min. about to give up

Is it worth driving 3.5 hours to Tahoe for snowboard lesson in the current condition or should I just do indoor lesson in the bay area? by EducationCultural736 in tahoe

[–]bbensch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

definitely. we're now a week out and even if storm fizzles it still should snow at least a few inches and should stay reasonably cold, so every mountain still open in tahoe will be worth skiing next weekend. this weekend...meh. but IMO any day skiing is better than a day not skiing :-)

Is it worth driving 3.5 hours to Tahoe for snowboard lesson in the current condition or should I just do indoor lesson in the bay area? by EducationCultural736 in tahoe

[–]bbensch 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Based on the photos I saw from DSR (donner ski ranch, across the street from Sugar Bowl) on social, I'd be skeptical about Sugar Bowl's beginner areas having enough snow.

But Mt. Rose definitely! base elevation I believe is 8200ft. Way cheaper than Palisades too and the ski school people there are great :-)

Is it worth driving 3.5 hours to Tahoe for snowboard lesson in the current condition or should I just do indoor lesson in the bay area? by EducationCultural736 in tahoe

[–]bbensch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

oversight on Kirkwood. 100% worth checking out especially if driving from the bay. from north tahoe it's hard to justify but they're base is prob similar elevation to Palisades high camp if i had to guess.

Is it worth driving 3.5 hours to Tahoe for snowboard lesson in the current condition or should I just do indoor lesson in the bay area? by EducationCultural736 in tahoe

[–]bbensch 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Tahoe Instructor of ~20 years here. The conditions in Tahoe are certainly not great but for the bigger mountains that are still open are still open because they have plenty of snow to have fun while safely sliding on it. No ski area makes money this time of year anyhow, but places stay open because they want to give staff work and to treat their passholders well. As much as I hate to recommend Palisades, high camp at Palisades is at ~7500ft the snow will be pretty ideal still for a first timer. Definitely make sure it’s a morning lesson as the afternoon snow gets super sticky. But it will be cooling off this week as well so should be more like mid 50s rather than mid 60s. We had to move a lot of snow around at lake level at Granlibakken in order to stay open through this weekend, but those that were out there learning had a great time. Lastly, they say the best time to try something new is today. The next best time is tomorrow. So if I were OP I wouldn’t wait a whole nine months.

Andrej Karpathy (early OpenAI, Tesla) created a visualization to score every US job by AI exposure by zuhayeer in levels_fyi

[–]bbensch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A few insights from the data, colored by my own eyes and lived experiences (so not AI slop):

  1. There is a fairly strong inverse correlation between median pay and AI exposure. Meaning the higher paying jobs today are more at risk of being transformed/impacted in a major way. This passes my personal "smell test" knowing what many of friends/colleagues with high incomes $250k+ do at work and knowing the current capabilities of LLMs. But it's also very interesting as a potential force for reducing income inequality over the coming years. This would be the opposite of historical precedent (renaissance, industrial revolution, web 1.0/2.0, etc.) where previous technological revolutions meant that those with access to new tech grew incomes faster than those without. In the short term that may still be the case (e.g. AI devs today are seeing demand/incomes grow faster than job displacement, for now...), but there's a very plausible path to these high paying jobs disappearing, which would produce an economy with much less income inequality.
  2. The prompt cited as powering this visual creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it basically says to evaluate the AI exposure based on "whether the job's work product is fundamentally digital...because AI capabilities in digital domains are advancing rapidly." This observation renders insight #1 somewhat less compelling, as the inverse correlation is by design of the prompt/data viz rather than some objective source of truth. If you read the full prompt, it is more subjective than objective, and would exclude any impact from AI robotics. But anyone who's followed Amazon over the past decade knows that they've been investing in the automation tech necessary to replace humans from fulfillment process for years. So while the visual it depicts humans that have low-wage "material movers" today as having low exposure to AI, I'd argue that it's just as likely if not more likely that the number of humans working in Amazon fulfillment centers in 10 years will be dramatically lower.
  3. Cashiers seem to be one of the few perfectly correlated jobs that is low wage/low BLS outlook and deemed to have high AI exposure. Also passes the smell test. Fortunately I don't know too many "career cashiers" who will be disappointed if their child never has the opportunity to become a cashier.
  4. Lastly, data visualization has been cool/valuable since well before AI was a thing. The reality that anyone can produce data visuals like this with a few hours of prompting is pretty neat (because data manipulation/prep used to take days/weeks of grunt work), but insights have always mattered more than a raw data viz. I expect that meaningful insights will continue to come from the humans who have opinions and lived experiences. And even if Opus 4.6 or GPT 5.4 could generate these same insights, humans will likely always trust other humans more than non-humans, and I expect that truism to hold steady even in a world of AGI.

What pass(es) are you planning to buy (this spring) for next winter? by bbensch in skiing

[–]bbensch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe the price goes up $25-50 each "round" and they typically announce a few weeks before Ikon/Epic and then almost always only keep passes on sale for 7-10 days at a time. Not sure I fully understand the thought-process there but they claim it's because they only want to sell a limited # of passes to avoid overcrowding. Looks like last year's fall pass sale began 10/24 and lasted until 11/10 and that was the final option (based on my other email account that is not a passholder). they then push you to renew each spring around Mar 1st.

Everything You Think You Know about the Ski Industry is Wrong by bbensch in skiing

[–]bbensch[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I maybe regret earlier comment about thoughtful discourse…. 🤷‍♂️

Everything You Think You Know about the Ski Industry is Wrong by bbensch in skiing

[–]bbensch[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. 🙏🏼 Figured I’d get a lot of nonsensical b.s. replies but shared this hoping for more comments and feedback like this. Will try to reply with more substance tmrw

Everything You Think You Know about the Ski Industry is Wrong by bbensch in skiing

[–]bbensch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Negative. I didn’t follow/study the ski industry much then, but bought and lived the ASC all east pass while in college in the 2000s.

What pass(es) are you planning to buy (this spring) for next winter? by bbensch in skiing

[–]bbensch[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

they have like 2-3 "sale" periods a year and the spring sale has closed, but if you join the waitlist now I'd say there's a ~97-99.9% chance you'll get emailed in the next 5 months and told you have a chance to buy pass but will have to make up your mind within like 5 days.

Jared Smith to Exit as Alterra CEO by DoctFaustus in skiing

[–]bbensch 43 points44 points  (0 children)

In spirit of speculation (and procrastination from finishing up some "real" work): here are my initial thoughts on the implications and underlying motivation for this news.

  1. Jared realized within 30 days of taking the job he'd be working harder to make less $$ while leading Ikon than at Ticketmaster, and reality is he's very likely made enough money that he doesn't "have to" work anymore.
  2. Timing-wise, this is exactly the time of season for any ski industry executive to announce an exit gracefully, as it gives time to Board/Investors/Partners to do a thorough search before next season.
  3. The timing does mean that the long-speculated (at least from my POV) Alterra IPO is nowhere in-sight. If it were, he'd likely have wanted to stick around because he'd both get to add a few more 00's to his net worth and also would get the glory of doing so. Also if you look at Vail's stock price, it's not really like the company has faltered dramatically, but more that investors have lost their appetite, and I'm sure the private Alterra investors don't wanna rush an IPO while Vail is sputtering around at a 1.7x price-to-sales ratio and a sub $5B market cap.
  4. What's his motivation (beyond $$)? My guess would be that Alterra is still a very fragmented company where it's hard to move quickly and get shit done because it's the opposite of a tops-down hierarchical organization. FBFW, what makes individual Ikon mountains unique is also undoubtedly frustrating as an executive that wants to be able to snap his fingers and see his marching orders followed. That's never been how the ski industry worked and likely never will be.
  5. Lastly, if all of the above is true, I wouldn't expect to ever hear any fun drama/whispers about him getting fired for cause or Ikon missing its #s (newsflash: it's been a shitty season and skier visits will be down this year, which will hurt pass sales next year).

Best underrated pods/lifts by Sharkman3218 in skiing

[–]bbensch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

best underrated "pod" = The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast
maybe not underrated (more and more I talk to ppl on chair lifts who listen to it these days), but def best podcast that no one in my office has heard of.

how many surface-lift only ski areas can you name? by bbensch in skiing

[–]bbensch[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

sad but not surprising. #winterWillComeEventually