Q & A With Jamie Schectman Of Mountain Rider’s Alliance

Manitoba Mountain, Alaska - MRA's Current Project

Mountain Rider’s Alliance (MRA) is an organization aimed at creating skier owned and operated ski areas. They are unique in that they want these areas to be completely sustainable by producing more energy than they use. MRA was founded by Jamie Schectman, Dave Scanlan, and Shanie Mathews in 2010, and their first project, Manitoba Mountain in Alaska, is currently underway. I recently had the pleasure to talk with Jamie about his life as a self-proclaimed ski bum, and about MRA. The following is a rough transcription of our discussion.

Nick: So you are a big skier. Can you tell us a little about how you got started skiing?

Jamie: Well, I’m one of those guys who after high school decided to take a year off before college to move to Lake Tahoe to ski and sort my brain out to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up…Well, I immediately knew that this was what I wanted to do when I grew up, so I guess you can me a ski bum since age 18. I’m 42 now.

Nick: Now I know you’ve done a fair amount of traveling for skiing and for business, what would you say is your favorite place to ski?

Jamie: Well, the Alps, the Chugach, and the Andes for three different reasons. The Alps because of the history and the flavor, and the fact that it’s really a mountain range with ski lifts through it. And the culture, even if people don’t ski, is very skier-centric. The Chugach because I don’t think there is anywhere on the planet, or very few anyway, where it snows that much on that steep a slope and becomes relatively safe, avalanche speaking, in just a couple clear, cold nights. And then the Andes. My wife and I lived in Argentina for 5 years, and we had a chance to ski at Las Leñas and tour around in the big Andes—and after the Himalayas, the Andes are the biggest mountain range in the world and the longest, and it’s very special too. So, I’d put those as my top three.

Nick: Let’s talk a little about Mountain Rider’s Alliance. Can you tell us a little about the organization, and how the idea came about?

Jamie: All through the years, as I mentioned when I was 18, I moved to Lake Tahoe and I took a job as a lift operator and quickly realized that was not exactly why I moved to the mountains. But it was very apparent early on that a lot of ski resorts were operating under a shot-term profit thought. And they were not running their operations with the skiers’ best interests in mind. So, all through my adult years I’ve always thought it’d be great to own or create a ski area with like minded people, and just run it the way that skiers want it. I think in the 80′s and 90′s, ski areas got out of the uphill transportation business and got into the resort development, and culinary, and out-of-boot experiences. So that was kind of the motivation for us to say ‘well, did you know there’s another way? Let’s focus on the community, and environment and being rider centric’, and with that the Mountain Riders Alliance was born.

Nick: Now you guys have a pretty unique model that you are working with. Can you elaborate on this and how it’s different from the traditional ski area model?

Jamie: Sure. Our three pillars are the community, the environment, and the riders. And so on the community level, we think it’s important to forge partnerships with the local communities. So instead of having an extensive food and beverage department, we would prefer to contract out and forge partnerships with established services. We’d also like to partner with local non-profits and really make a positive difference in the local communities. On the environmental level, climate change is a real issue and our sport is going to be extinct unless we take matters into our own hands and start to really combat it. So one of the things that we’re going to strive at creating in all of our areas is to create more energy onsite then we consume and actually be an energy center that happens to have skiing. This will not only help to combat climate change and lead by example, but also this will negate the number two cost in the ski industry, which is electricity. Then on the rider side of things, we want to create a membership type of model, kind of like a golf or country club model, in that you pay an annual fee and you have specific rights. Members will have their voice heard to ensure their mountain is being run up to their standards, early ups, discounts, end of season party, etc… Non members will be able to ski there too, much like a country club during non peak times. So, we just want to go back to the roots and focus on the downhill slide, not the other amenities that so many other big corporate resorts are focusing on.

Nick: So MRA has a great project underway up in Alaska – Manitoba Mountain. Can you tell us a little about that?

Jamie: The Manitoba Mountain ski area restoration project is a ski area that was actually in operation from 1941 – 1960 and in its heyday had three rope tows on the lower slopes. One of the other founders of Mountain Rider’s Alliance, Dave Scanlan, lives on the Kenai Peninsula and has been approached by the local communities for the last decade, as he is the local land planning chairman of his town, asking ‘can we create a ski area here, can we restore one. We have very limited winter recreation opportunities, and we have a very limited winter economy’. So that was the motivation for starting the Manitoba Project, and what we are really excited about with this is a focus on three service lifts, and the in bounds terrain will be beginner, intermediate, and some advanced skiing – about 1000 acres and 2600 vertical feet – modest, nothing huge. But the terrain directly outside the resort will open up world-class terrain – terrain that would normally require a helicopter or a long day of hiking to get to. So, we’re excited to bring this ‘minimal infrastructure, big on mountain’ approach to the Chugach.

Nick: So what are some of the goals you have for Mountain Rider’s Alliance in the future?

Jamie: Well, we just launched a ski campaign partnership with Ski Logik, a sustainable leader in ski manufacturing, and we designed this really beautiful top sheet art work that is actually the Manitoba Mountain project. So that is one of our short term projects. We are selling pairs of these in any model of Ski Logik skis. A percentage of the proceeds are going to the Native American Olympic Team Foundation which was founded by Suzy “Chapstick” Chaffe. But, some of the mid and long term goals besides the Manitoba project is to identify and ultimately convert existing ski areas in the lower 48 that maybe have an operating ownership that is getting old or tired, or financially strained. We think we can create these mountain playgrounds, as we refer to them, throughout the world. There are a few places in particular that stick out. Jackson Wyoming has a ski area called Snow King Mountain that is an example where there is a huge community benefit to it. The community is engaged, and it is a very wealthy community, but they don’t have the structure in place to purchase it. Another one would be Kirkwood, California. If you follow Tahoe ski corporation history, Vail and another equity firm have come in and purchased most of the Tahoe ski resorts, that being Northstar, Heavenly, Squaw, and Alpine [Meadows]. So Kirkwood is really one of the last of the big resorts that has not been corporatized, if you will. So, we see this model as having the ability to create onsite energy creation. We have a community component and this rider-centric vibe. We can’t apply this everywhere. We can’t apply it where there is a huge footprint, but we do think it can be replicated throughout the world.

Nick: Do you have any thoughts on any east coast operations eventually, or is it primarily going to be out west?

Jamie: No, actually the east coast is something that we think is a really good fit because, as you know, the east coast is very authentic and a lot of the ski areas, the New England ski areas for example, many of them are forty, fifty and sixty years old and many of them, you know, the Mount Snow’s and places like that, are really where US skiing started. So, we envision being able to do this on the east coast, the west coast, in Alaska, and in Canada. We were recently contacted by an organization that is interested in doing this in an area in Eastern Europe, and or central Asia. When I lived in Argentina, a community came to us interested in doing this. So, as we develop this model and put this blueprint into place, we feel it can be replicated around the world just as long as the demand is there.

Nick: What advice do you have for anyone who might like to get involved, or to show their support for MRA. I know you mentioned the partnership with Ski Logik, but is there more that can be done?

Jamie: Sure, you can go to our website MountainRidersAlliance.com and sign up for the email list, follow our Facebook page, and we will keep people posted on what’s going on. If you happen to be a sugar daddy or sugar momma, we’re just ski bums with a passion – so if you’re a high level investor and want to become involved you can track us down at info@MountainRidersAlliance.com. But, really just spreading the word, and we love input. Over the years we’ve been able to brand and change our message by the input that we have received. It is very rare, if you think about it, to start an organization and brand before you really have a product. So, we have used this to our advantage and we just love the feedback. People send us lots of mail – our inbox is full every day with different ideas and ‘have you seen this or heard of that’. There are 21 million skiers in the U.S. alone, and people are very passionate. So sharing the passion and just communicating something has been very helpful and we always encourage it. (Check out their website for more info on the Ski Logik skis).

To listen to the entire Q & A session, check out the clip on Sound Cloud by clicking here!