Midwest Ski Journal likes to highlight a few pieces of skiing internet worth your time in Linking Turns. Find the best, most important, least important and otherwise links here each week. L

LINK 1: The Giant Resort Companies You Hate Are Saving Skiing (Outside Magazine)

Alterra and Vail Resorts, the two foremost ski resort conglomerates, have 31 ski resorts in North America that account for about 35 percent of all skier visits, according to Marc Peruzzi, who wrote this excellent piece for Outside. 

Peruzzi looks at the common sentiment among skiers and riders that these massive companies are ruining skiing and turns it on its head. 

Conglomerates aren’t killing off core skiers and riders. In fact, they’re throwing them a lifeline. Acquisitions come with downsides, of course, including overcrowding and excessive grooming. But by drastically reducing the cost of ski passes and offering some semblance of job security for locals, the corporations are giving the struggling industry a future. Have you ever heard a skier in a bar bitch about cheaper season passes? Hell no, bro.

Through this piece, Peruzzi breaks down how the Epic and Ikon passes offer skiers steep discounts on season passes with access to more areas, while individual resorts charge more for passes to just one. 

For Midwesterners, these conglomerates have changed the game for the better. We don’t live in these western mountain towns, so the cultural shifts townies lament don’t affect us. We just get to ski more places for less money. 

LINK 2: CMH Unveils “Lines of Sight: A Guided Virtual Reality Experience” (SKI Magazine)

Jenny Wiegand of SKI Magazine put this piece together on CMH’s touring virtual reality heli-skiing exhibit.

In the first big ticket foray into virtual reality that I’ve seen in the ski world, CMH partnered with Sherpas Cinema and a little company called “Google” to put together a five minute film that simulates the experience of taking a heli to the top of a mountain, disembarking and skiing the untouched stuff. 

In a way, it’s an enormously expensive ad for CMH’s product and I’m sure the soulest of soul skiers out there scoff at the very idea, but as an entertainment product, I think VR is incredible and making a VR-specific ski movie seemed inevitable. 

View this post on Instagram

Welcome to Lines of Sight: A Guided Virtual Reality Experience This evening, we launched a cinematic first in both the tech and ski industry – heli-skiing in virtual reality Created in partnership with the award-winning @sherpascinema, this cinematic piece allows you to sample the closest feeling to flying without leaving your chair We invite you to step into the heli, soar above the glaciers, and drop into the best runs of your life in this beautifully immersive piece See how it was created, and find out how to experience it for yourself. Link in bio 👆

A post shared by CMH Heli-Skiing (@cmh_heli) on Oct 24, 2018 at 8:47pm PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

LINK 3: Crossing Paths – Minnesota (Good Company)

Good Company’s 10-minute short film about the urban skiing culture in Minnesota is an ode to this place.

In the opening seconds of the video, the skiers call Minnesota a “mecca” for street skiing. The film combines some new stuff with some classic Minnesota urban clips, too. 

It’s bizarre to hear skiers talk with such reverence for Minnesota and making the trek out here when it seems like we are always looking west.

ICYMI

Last time on Linking Turns, we looked into some knee pre-hab techniques, a flight deal to Bozeman, MT and some insider flying tips for skiers and riders.