There’s a profile making the rounds right now on Erik Mogensen — the Entabeni Systems founder who’s become the unofficial face of independent ski areas fighting back against Epic and Ikon. The framing in most of the coverage is cultural: small hills, mom-and-pop charm, “skiing shouldn’t
I spend a lot of time thinking about the ones that didn't get built. Not just ski areas — all of it. The subdivisions that stalled in permitting. The resorts that broke ground and ran out of money. The mixed-use developments where the vision was right and the
Posted to DanSkiAndBuild.com | June 2026 There’s a particular kind of real estate that makes my brain light up: distressed assets with a story, underutilized land with bones, and places where someone else’s abandoned ambition becomes someone else’s opportunity. Last week, I came across a listing that
By Daniel Kaufman My dad called today and asked why I hadn’t posted in a while. It was a fair question, and one that deserved an honest answer. Life has been full lately. Changes personally, changes professionally, a season of figuring things out. But here’s what I told
By Daniel Kaufman | Dan Ski & Build I can’t tell you where I was. Not yet, anyway. More on that in a future post — and trust me, it’ll be worth the wait. What I can tell you is this: I recently visited a place that called itself a
DANSKIANDBUILD.COM · SKI REAL ESTATE · MAY 2026 One conversation with an independent ski area operator changed how I see the mountain. The slope is about to get steeper for developers willing to build where the big resorts won’t. I had a conversation today that I can’t stop thinking
The numbers are in, and they’re ugly — at least if you ski west of the Rockies. The National Ski Areas Association just dropped preliminary data for the 2025-26 season: 52.6 million skier visits nationally. That’s down roughly 9 million from last year, a 9.1% drop
While Boyne and Vail were pulling the plug in March, a small resort in the Pennsylvania Poconos was skiing into May — and drawing guests from Cleveland, Chicago, and Nashville to prove it. By Daniel Kaufman · @DanSkiAndBuild On May 5th, 2026, there was exactly one ski resort open on the entire
There's a strange thing happening in skiing right now. On paper, the sport has never been bigger — record pass sales, billion-dollar valuations, glossy base villages stretching across the West. And yet anyone who's actually clicked into a binding this season can feel it: something is
The numbers seem impossible to square. U.S. ski resorts logged 61.5 million visits in 2024-25, the second-highest season on record. Globally, we hit 399 million skier visits. Demand has never been higher. And yet, Vail Resorts—the behemoth that supposedly owns the industry—reported skier visits
Dan Ski & Build · New Ashford, Massachusetts · April 2026 Brodie Mountain went dark in 2002. Sold again in late 2023. And now, more than two decades after its last run, a $200 million plan wants to bring it roaring back — not just as a ski area, but as a full-
History, Present, Future, and a Trip Report By Daniel Kaufman | Dan Ski & Build | Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan There are places that demand you earn them. Mt. Bohemia is one of them. No snowmaking. No grooming. No beginners. Just 273 inches of Lake Superior powder, 900 vertical feet of uncut terrain,