REMEMBERING: EpicSki.com 1999-2017

[dbostedo]

Funny, as soon as I got off the call with the powers that be at Vail that EpicSki was being shut down, Phil was my first call. Gave him and Tricia advance warning to make sure they had enough bandwidth for the probably incoming migration and that I'd send people their way. Still miss that place and upset about how they (Mountain News/Vail) handled the shutdown.

Tyler!!



How are you? (And what prompted the post?)

 

[fatbob]

Funny, as soon as I got off the call with the powers that be at Vail that EpicSki was being shut down, Phil was my first call. Gave him and Tricia advance warning to make sure they had enough bandwidth for the probably incoming migration and that I'd send people their way. Still miss that place and upset about how they (Mountain News/Vail) handled the shutdown.

It was fuckin Vail under Rob Katz, the man who decided to help instructors out on their poor wages by putting out begging notices encouraging punters to tip. What did you actually expect of them after the circumstances in which you took the helm?

 

[Philpug]

Funny, as soon as I got off the call with the powers that be at Vail that EpicSki was being shut down, Phil was my first call. Gave him and Tricia advance warning to make sure they had enough bandwidth for the probably incoming migration and that I'd send people their way. Still miss that place and upset about how they (Mountain News/Vail) handled the shutdown.

Yes it was a class act from you and we appreciated it. But we knew weeks before ... unfortunately well before you received your call from them. We were actually in Vermont at Pinnacle Ski Shop talking with @Mike Thomas (Mike, I am not sure you remember me excusing myself) when I got the call from someone at Huddler asking if I knew what was going and that MNC was pulling the plug.

Even before Tyler's call, we had the artwork and eulogy ready to post. Sadly it was like a party that went bad and they left Tyler with the tab. We posted this thread w/in minutes of geting the call. We did want to give Tyler the courtesy of posting it their first, if we posted it here when we initially heard, it would have been ugly for everyone. It was pretty shitty they way MNC handled it.

It was fuckin Vail under Rob Katz, the man who decided to help instructors out on their poor wages by putting out begging notices encouraging punters to tip. What did you actually expect of them after the circumstances in which you took the helm?

This was Heather and the MNC team that pulled this shit, Rob didn't even know what EpicSki was or that they owned it.

 

[James]

Ha, Heather. I remember when they took it over, the discussions in a thread with her. They didn’t go well. It became obvious that the “team” was pretty small.

 

[Tricia]

FWIW, Heather was/is a very nice person who was put in a position that didn't reflect her true self.
I have no annomosity for her and hope she is doing well.

 

[crgildart]

FWIW, Heather was/is a very nice person who was put in a position that didn't reflect her true self.
I have no annomosity for her and hope she is doing well.

They sent her on a fools errand where the anticipated response was shoot the messenger. Sometimes work sucks and you either have to suck it up and follow instructions or find another gig. I think most of us would have done the same thing in her shoes, probably not as well as she did what nobody she had to interact with wanted done..

And let's be honest.. We ALL knew the party was probably over when Joan sold it to them.. What a class act Joan was. Those were the good old days..

 

[Tricia]

I wasn't sure the party was over until they released us from our contracts in October 2015.

There were other owners who are passionate about EpicSki.com and are still members here but don't post often.
@AC_ @Chris Geib @Bob Barnes @Weems @ssh @David Chan and others.

No one lost more content on Epic than @Bob Barnes

This is one of the reasons Weems reached out to us to publish his Brilliant Skiing. He trusted us to keep it alive. I have a really nice email exchange with him prior to moving to France to marry

Brilliant Skiing, Everyday by Weems Westfeldt

Brilliant Skiing, Everyday

www.skitalk.com

 

[Bill Miles]

I will repeat my comment from back then:

Vail sucks

 

[James]

The problem was the name epic. Epicski had the name way back before Vail. I remember picking people up on Loveland Pass driving with Tricia. They had skied down and we gave them epic stickers and they thought it was Vail. Vail had co-opted the name.
I told Joan to sue. There was no money for that. Possible it could’ve been gotten through Paul Allen’s fund back then but who knows. Vail buying the business averted any such problem.

 

[Tyler Wenzel]

Tyler!!



How are you? (And what prompted the post?)

I check in once a year or so and happened to have a DM about this thread from almost a year ago I saw until now haha. Doing great. I've moved on to other things from skiing as life has taken me in other directions. I'm now quite heavily involved with wildlife education and conservation in the neotropics. Not much skiing to be had in a tropical jungle.

 

[Tyler Wenzel]

Yes it was a class act from you and we appreciated it. But we knew weeks before ... unfortunately well before you received your call from them. We were actually in Vermont at Pinnacle Ski Shop talking with @Mike Thomas (Mike, I am not sure you remember me excusing myself) when I got the call from someone at Huddler asking if I knew what was going and that MNC was pulling the plug.

Even before Tyler's call, we had the artwork and eulogy ready to post. Sadly it was like a party that went bad and they left Tyler with the tab. We posted this htread w/in minutes of geting the call. We did want to give Tyler the courtesy of posting it their first, if we posted it here when we initially heard, it would have been ugly for everyone. It was pretty shitty they way NMC handled it.


This was Heather and the MNC team that pulled this shit, Rob didn't even know what EpicSki was or that they owned it.

Not surprising. In a way, the actual deathblow to EpicSki was the transition to Huddler years before and its sale to Wikia. After Phil and Tricia departed (which is a whole other saga) I was involved in extensive planning/research of trying to get Epicski off of Huddler as it was very evident they were also being dismantled and shut down after Wikia bought them for the IP and engineering talent and decided to shut down the Huddler platform.

The transition to Huddler happened before I joined Epic and I know there were good reasons for it, but also in hindsight putting all of the eggs in one non-compatible or portable technological basket where you had no say in their future as a business was also not the smartest of moves. I think MNC/Vail probably would have just left Epic to exist, albeit with continual budget cuts and not supporting it as was a continual fight that Tricia and Phil had with them and that I did as well had it not been for Huddler. The developer who some other Huddler sites found to port their content back to other forum software was clear that because of how Huddler was set up and the lack of documentation any transition would lose some data/features and it was going to be (going from memory) like 1 - 2 years revenue to do the transition. So my understanding is that they decided that Epic was fine as long as it didn't cost them any money. The moment it required an investment (that would have paid off after a couple of years) they pulled the plug.

That's my understanding of things from the information I had and going off memories that are now from many years ago.

 

[Tyler Wenzel]

It was fuckin Vail under Rob Katz, the man who decided to help instructors out on their poor wages by putting out begging notices encouraging punters to tip. What did you actually expect of them after the circumstances in which you took the helm?

Since enough years have passed now, might as well share some thoughts I didn't back then. Some perspective and history. I became heavily involved with EpicSki when I was like 16? I was bored at high school and started updating some of the wiki pages for resorts I frequented. Nolo reached out to me about being a "resorts editor" to help with the Unofficial Guides that they wanted to see created. A few years later when I was 17 or 18 they wanted to start posting to Social Media and figured since I was young I knew what that was. I was getting paid like $100 a month to post a few things a day to Twitter and Facebook.

After graduating I started working in IT (actually since I was 14 but that's another story) and was fairly tech-savvy. Some internal politics and/or questionable actions lead to Tom (Cirquerider) being fired. There were for a long time differences in opinion over the direction and culture of EpicSki. I was more on Tom's side than on some others but I wasn't privy to all the details of that situation either. I was just asked to handle the tech stuff he was doing. Around this time I moved to Costa Rica and EpicSki became my main source of income.

I got a call from Heather that Phil and Tricia were being let go. I was given vague innuendos of misdeeds but nothing specific. I both wanted to see Epic succeed because I really enjoyed it but was also in the position that it was my primary source of income. I think most of us have been in a spot where we hate something our boss is doing but also have to pay the rent.

Conversely, Phil and Tricia and I disagreed, at times strongly, about the editorial direction of Epicski. When Tricia was managing editor and I was handling some things like social media we would debate this a lot. There was a divide in the community between the gear heads and those who didn't care that much about what the latest ski/boot/binding was. I felt that we were dedicating too many resources to gear reviews and not enough to resorts, trip reports, guides, etc*. The argument could have been made either way. I always pointed to Google Analytics data that when I featured content like an Unofficial Guide in the prime spot on the homepage or social media it got loads of views whereas when a gear review got featured it only saw a marginal uptick in views. Conversely, gear reviews were big drivers of organic search traffic and gear shops were more likely to be advertisers than resorts.

I think the two sites could have coexisted with PugSki (at the time) being heavily focused on gear while Epic maintained great content like the Unofficial Guides, trip reports, repositories of instructional content, etc. But as I detailed in another post above other circumstances meant that wasn't to be. And I'm glad everyone was able to find a home here.

EDIT: I just remembered my personal favorite. I had put together an interview series with people like Jim Niehues about his experience and philosophy for making maps, and some professional skiers sharing their experiences. Somewhat akin to a podcast before that became really popular like it is today.

 

[Tricia]

@Tyler Wenzel Like you, I'd like to see more resort content. @Jim Kenney has done a fair amount and we still have a fair amount of Resort Guides, and some resort articles. It could be stronger.

Obviously, Phil and I are gear centric, which is our focus and a valuable space to be in.

The unique situation we've been put in is that we have to create a living with the website because it has become a full time job for us. The owners of EpicSki all had other jobs and sources of income to inject into the site without taking on ads. We don't have that luxury.

 

[Philpug]

The unique situation we've been put in is that we have to create a living with the website because it has become a full time job for us.

As @Uncle Louie half jokingly said, when Pugski was crowd funded and started, he said that the community did it to us, not for us, putting us in a postion that we had to find a way to keep the site running and with enough income that we could afford to make it a business. This is why there are ads to pay the bills.

 

[Tricia]

The problem was the name epic. Epicski had the name way back before Vail. I remember picking people up on Loveland Pass driving with Tricia. They had skied down and we gave them epic stickers and they thought it was Vail. Vail had co-opted the name.
I told Joan to sue. There was no money for that. Possible it could’ve been gotten through Paul Allen’s fund back then but who knows. Vail buying the business averted any such problem.

That was funny when we told them we'd give them a ride if they put the stickers on their skis/snowboards.

Not so very long ago I had a conversation wtih Bob Barnes who said, "I wonder if EpicSki would still be alive if we'd sued Vail for the name when they started using Epic back in 2005-2006."

EpicSki.com was launched in 1999, so quite awhile before VR started using the term.

 

[James]

Not so very long ago I had a conversation wtih Bob Barnes who said, "I wonder if EpicSki would still be alive if we'd sued Vail for the name when they started using Epic back in 2005-2006."

I think it might of stayed. It would’ve least made Vail pay or give up the name. But that would be a concerted effort over years and require pro bono law work.

 

[Tyler Wenzel]

That was funny when we told them we'd give them a ride if they put the stickers on their skis/snowboards.

Not so very long ago I had a conversation wtih Bob Barnes who said, "I wonder if EpicSki would still be alive if we'd sued Vail for the name when they started using Epic back in 2005-2006."

EpicSki.com was launched in 1999, so quite awhile before VR started using the term.

Given what I said above about Huddler, I think other things might have killed it or at least severely handicapped it. I know several of the smaller sites on Huddler ended up just shutting down when Huddler shut down. Epic was somewhere in the middle in size if I remember right. There was a former Huddler dev willing to do the migration and I think they expected somewhere in the ballpark of $20 - 30,000 would be required to do the conversion depending on what data we were willing to just throw out vs wanted to save. And that was premised on then locking into their management structure for support although at least it would be on an open source platform rather than something proprietary.

It never got the hate that it deserved publicly, but the decision to go with Huddler was probably as bad or worse for EpicSki (at least in terms of promises vs. what was delivered) as Vail was. At least in hindsight but hard to blame them at the time they made the decision.

 

[Philpug]

It never got the hate that it deserved publicly, but the decision to go with Huddler was probably as bad or worse for EpicSki (at least in terms of promises vs. what was delivered) as Vail was. At least in hindsight but hard to blame them at the time they made the decision.

In hindsite, yes. Huddler make a lot of promises that they had no intentions of keeping, the whole patform was homogenized to the lowest common forum, we saw it specifically in the product/review pages not only for gear, our focus but resorts, your focus.

I know we explored going through an intermediary (knowing that they would not wan to talk to us) to host and archive the content but there was not even a considertion or return e-mail. I think it was best said "MNC not only burned down the library but prevented the fire trucks from putting the blaze out". But in reality, what of that content is even relative today, maybe 5%? Which a good portion of that like all of the gear history was brought over here and archived much better. Where the thread on Epic was pushing a million views over about 15 years, we had more that double that the least time I looked which was a few years ago, so in about 5 years.

 

[AltaSkier]

But in reality, what of that content is even relative today, maybe 5%?

Then everything that I posted on EpicSki was in the 5%! All of my posts were gold, gold I tell ya!!

But in reality, the only thing left there that I still wish I had access to was my sort of trip report when I did my best impression of Christopher McCandless in the Escalante Desert. Ok, maybe it was closer to Aron Ralston (but I got out with all the body parts I went in with).

 

[crgildart]

That was funny when we told them we'd give them a ride if they put the stickers on their skis/snowboards.

Not so very long ago I had a conversation wtih Bob Barnes who said, "I wonder if EpicSki would still be alive if we'd sued Vail for the name when they started using Epic back in 2005-2006."

EpicSki.com was launched in 1999, so quite awhile before VR started using the term.

Missed opportunity. Nolo might have owned Vail instead of Vail owning Epicski. It's probably only a matter of days before their social media folks send a C&D letter to the Pugs about this thread...