Good morning, Stoke Crew. Hope everyone had a good weekend. We're in that part of November where the peaks are white but the foothills are still brown. I'm ready to ride some powwwderrrr! Here's the report :)

Stay STOKED - Tyler

 
 
 

In today's report

 
  • 🚠 Ikon Base gets Deer Valley days
  • ⛷️ Shiffrin bets big on GS, super-G
  • 💼 Vail proxy fight updates
  • 💰 Your $29 pays for avy forecasts

Skiing

 

❄️ Base Pass perks and Shiffrin's pivot.

 
 

🚠 The Ikon Base Pass picked up a rad new perk. Up to three days at Deer Valley is now part of the pass for 2026-27, something they have never offered before. Every visit needs a reservation, a few dates are blacked out, and snowboarding is still banned at Deer Valley! Lame!

 
  • Blackouts run Dec. 26-30, Jan. 16-17, and Feb. 13-14. That covers the Christmas rush and the weekends before MLK Day and Presidents' Day.
  • Deer Valley is serious about the reservation rule. Show up without one and the resort may let it slide once a season. Strike two earns you a warning email. Strike three suspends your Ikon there until next winter.
  • The bottom-tier Session Pass gets nothing at Deer Valley, while the full Ikon tops out at seven days.
  • The big new lift this winter is the Hail Peak Express, serving seven new runs on 200 acres on the far east side of the mountain.
  • Deer Valley has doubled its skiable acreage from two years ago!
 

Why It Matters: Deer Valley caps how many people can buy a ticket each day. Letting the middle-tier pass in, even with guardrails, says a lot. They want to keep the experience good and not have crazy lifts lines.

 
 
 

⛷️ Fewer slaloms, more giant slalom and super-G. That's the shape of Mikaela Shiffrin's 2026-27 season, which she's dubbed her exploration season. In Field Notes, a new set of videos, she walked through the Sölden opener and came out of it feeling good about the plan.

 
  • Last year was a different story. She arrived at Sölden in danger of falling outside the GS top 30 and wondered if her giant slalom days were ending.
  • This time she was fastest on run 1, 0.14 seconds clear of the field, and flashed green at the bottom. Run 2 went sideways in bad visibility, and she dropped to seventh.
  • Her U.S. teammate Paula Moltzan nipped Lara Colturi by 0.01 for her first World Cup win.
  • The fear is real. A Killington GS crash in November 2024 punctured her side, and PTSD followed. December 2023 was the last time she won a World Cup GS.
  • Her slalom season opens at Killington on Nov. 29, so she'll miss Levi (nine career wins there) and Gurgl. In the meantime she's training, with a stop in Colorado to ski alongside teammates. Beaver Creek is on the stretch that follows.
 

Why It Matters: Shiffrin could keep stacking slalom wins on cruise control. Instead she's building her season around the discipline that left her with PTSD. Anyone who's come back from a bad crash knows the body heals before the head does. Watching the best skier ever talk openly about fear and lean into GS anyway is a solid reminder that confidence gets rebuilt one run at a time.

Partnerships

 

🎿 Ski Berthoud Pass? Thurday night is for you!

 
 

🎬🍺 Beacons & Brews is back for year two! Friends of Berthoud Pass is taking over Denver's Oriental Theater on Thursday, November 12 for a night of community-made backcountry films, a short avalanche safety talk, a fundraising raffle, and a round of sponsor films to close it out. Last year's debut sold out to a crowd of 500 and became the biggest fundraiser the nonprofit has ever had!

 
  • Where your money goes: Friends of Berthoud Pass has run free avalanche education on the Front Range since 2004, with classroom talks and on-snow sessions taught by volunteer instructors. Raffle proceeds keep those classes free and help keep access to the pass open.
  • The raffle: Win some sick gear from brands like Rab, Flylow, La Sportiva, Weston, Stio, and more!
  • The details: Doors at 6:30 PM, films at 7:30 PM. All ages, bar with ID. Tickets are about $21 and comes with one free raffle ticket. Additional raffle tickets are available for purchase at the venue. The Oriental Theater, Denver. See you all there!
 

Why It Matters: A lot of Front Range skiers and riders learned the basics of avalanche safety in a free FOBP class. One night at the Oriental helps keep those classes free for the next crew coming up. It's also a solid way to get fired up for the season and meet some cool like-minded people. Yeeeew!

 

🎟️ Grab tickets here!!!

Business

 

🎿 Vail's proxy fight update!

 
 

💼 Vail Resorts' board is facing a challenge from a hedge fund. Oasis Management holds roughly 10% of Vail Resorts stock. It's asking fellow shareholders to put two of its people on the board at the Dec. 14 annual meeting.

 

Quick beta. In a proxy fight, an investor puts up its own board candidates and lobbies other shareholders to elect them instead of the company's slate. Oasis is running former Disney CEO Bob Chapek and financier M. Ashton Hudson.

 
  • "Vail Resorts has gone downhill," Oasis founder Seth Fischer wrote to shareholders.
  • Vail's Oct. 30 letter to shareholders says the Oasis picks "lack the experience and judgment" for the role. The company is betting on Epic Experience, a push to run more of your day through the app.
  • Baron Capital owns 18.3%, the biggest stake, and is siding with vail.
 

Why It Matters: Vail's Epic Pass changed how skiers buy their winters, so a fight about where Vail goes next is a fight about how big-pass skiing works. If Oasis gets seats, expect pressure on pricing, crowds, and what your pass actually gets you. If Vail holds, it's betting the app and the network fix things...

 
 
 

💰 That $29 expense on your car registration is pulling real weight. Three and a half years of Keep Colorado Wild Pass sales have added up to about $146 million. CPW's latest annual report shows what it's paid for.

 
  • Think of the money as a yearly bucket line. State parks fill up first, with $32.5 million for staff and upkeep. Backcountry search and rescue gets the next $2.5 million, then $1 million goes to the avalanche center. Wildlife and rec funds catch the overflow.
  • You can feel it in the backcountry. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center puts out about 37% more forecasts than it did in 2022-23, with 44% more staff behind them.
  • State payouts to rescue teams topped $2.7 million in 2025, up from about $1.1 million in 2022. Rescues in Colorado are free to the person being rescued, and the 50 or so teams that do them are all volunteers.
  • All this with most drivers still opting out. Only about 28% kept the fee in 2026!
 

Why It Matters: This is a funding idea that worked better than planned. The state assumed most drivers would skip the fee, and the pass still blew past its $36 million yearly goal. Make it easy to say yes, and Coloradans will pay for the outdoors.

What else is going on

 

📚 Trailhead Trivia

 

In 1948, a Sun Valley skier became the first American to win Olympic gold in alpine skiing. Name her.

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Answer!

 

Gretchen Fraser. She won the women's slalom at the 1948 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and added silver in the combined. She was first down the hill in both runs, and a 17-minute timing delay before her second run didn't slow her. Those were the first Olympic alpine medals of any color for the U.S. She retired to Sun Valley, and her medals still sit in the lodge restaurant named for her.

See you soon,
Tyler
Founder / Editor — THE STOKE REPORT

© 2026 THE STOKE REPORT.
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