Daniel Scott

So hopefully, you know, smaller places, smaller independents that do join conglomerates are able to get those benefits yet maintain the ski culture that they've had over the last 20, 30, sometimes 50 years.

Yeah, that's been one of the big concerns, both in mountain communities, but even the National Ski Areas Association in the States, they recognize that sort of

risk of becoming an even more elite sport in terms of pricing some people out of the marketplace.

And they're looking at what kind of options they can do to keep some lower cost options alive.

And many of those are smaller local ski areas.

And that's a longer term strategy that's really important to the ski industry because if you don't learn to ski locally or you aren't able to take your kids to learn to ski a half hour away or something like that,

then who's the next generation of skiers that are going to go out to Vail or some of the bigger ski areas or then, you know, the elite athlete pipeline that goes to the next Olympics.

So that's, that's a big concern.

You know, how, how much progress they're making on, on keeping some of those costs under control.

That's an open debate.

It still seems to be trending that way, but hopefully some good strategies will emerge in the next little while.

because something has to change, because climate change is just going to keep pushing operating costs up, and something's got to counterbalance it.

Thanks for inviting me on, anytime.