Pats Peak GM Kris Blomback on lessons, love from ski industry

What started in high school with a fascination for snowmaking led Kris Blomback to pursue a career in the ski business that has spanned 32 years, all in New England.

He has worked at Pats Peak in Henniker, N.H., for 28 years now, including the past 24 as general manager. With degrees in business administration and commercial recreation management from Lyndon State College in Vermont, Blomback’s passion for the sport steered him to explore just about every mountain operations function you can imagine.

New England Ski Journal pinned down Blomback for a conversation on his love for skiing and for the family-owned resort he has called home now for nearly three decades.

New England Ski Journal: It seems your entire life has revolved around skiing. How did it all begin?

Kris Blomback: I think I honestly started skiing because I really didn’t have a choice! My family comes from a Scandinavian background, and there were no beach vacations in our household. Everything was focused on skiing. We lived on Long Island and each X-mas vacation we would plot a trip to the Berkshires, where we would ski Jiminy Peak, Butternut, Catamount and sometimes Bousquet and Brodie. When Presidents’ Week would come around, that would lead us to weeklong vacations in southern Vermont based out of the Village Inn in Landgrove for about 15 years straight. Once in a while we would head west.

NESJ: So it’s safe to assume skiing also played a role in your decision to attend college at Lyndon State?

Blomback: Absolutely. My brain clicked somewhere in my high school years. For some strange reason I became obsessed with snowmaking, ski lifts and, in general, mountain operations. When I was still in high school I tinkered with ideas on how to make snow with a garden hose and paint sprayer in my backyard. I thank my father, because he was an engineer and was always encouraging us to build and try things, and to pursue our passions. He might have scratched his head on the whole ski area thing, but he always cheered me on. Lyndon had a ski program that was top notch, and I adjusted the curriculum and took a number of accounting and business courses as well to round my education out. Because as much as we don’t like to admit it, the flow of money, dollars and profit is what keeps the company alive and prospering.

NESJ: Your first “real job” in the industry was at Magic Mountain, where you cut your teeth for five years. How did that come about and what did you learn from your time there?

Blomback: When I was a sophomore at Lyndon, a great mentor and friend of mine, Jim Shultz — a fellow alum — was looking for summer workers. So I answered the ad — with not a practical stitch of experience — and asked him to teach me. Things were booming back then in the ’80s. Magic at the time was co-owned with Bromley, and if one was willing to work, you got to try to do a lot of different things.

We were involved in a lot of projects on the mountain as we were trying to get modernized. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had determination, and Jim instilled a work philosophy in me that continues to this day to think differently on how to get things done. It was emphasized not to cut corners but to instill some DNA of frugality that serves me well to this day. At Magic, I learned to make a dollar and buy $1.25 worth of stuff.

In my time there, I rose from summer laborer, to snowmaker, to crew chief, to head of snowmaking, all the way up to mountain manager for Timberside (the backside of Magic and former Timber Ridge Ski Area). As much fun as I was having, it all came crashing to a halt in the summer of 1991, when after years of expansion the proverbial money well dried up and the operation was closed down.

NESJ: And so your Pats Peak era began.

Blomback: I started at Pats Peak in the fall of 1991, and what a difference 25-plus years makes. Pats Peak was and is always a special place for so many families, and it continues to be so to this day. There have been some true characters that have worked here, and I have appreciated and learned from them all.

NESJ: What is the secret to success at Pats Peak, and how does your team make it happen?

Blomback: We want it to be a firstclass family mountain with impeccably maintained facilities and service like no other. If one was to look at our staffing levels, you might find them a little on the heavy side, but the facility is kept spotless even on the heaviest of days. We always have instructors for teaching, and all lifts are running the majority of the time so that no one is standing in line. So we’re doing what we’ve always been doing but with a modern twist. We are in a tough neighborhood, in terms of competition, and we need to crush it with service. The ski area that makes the sport the easiest to do I think wins in the future, and we are laser focused on doing that.

NESJ: Given all your industry experience, what else besides service is critical for the success of a ski area?

Blomback: Snowmaking really is the most important aspect. You can have the nicest lodges in the world and all the real estate you could want, but if you don’t have the snow, the rest is meaningless. I would argue that most ski areas today have successfully dealt with the trends of building bigger lodges, faster lifts and ramping up their respective physical plants.

I can’t speak for other areas, but at Pats Peak alone, we are building a system that will take us from completely closed to fully open — 100 percent of our trails — in 48 hours. Right now it takes about two to three weeks for us to race across the mountain and get the slopes open.

When we get that cold air, I’ll put our system’s capabilities up against anybody in terms of making snow and getting terrain open and resurfacing. We consistently make some of the best snow, and our guests are always complimenting us.

NESJ: How has your personal approach to your work changed over the years?

Blomback: Probably the biggest transformation that I have had as GM is to slow down time and just take the curveballs that come at you in the business in stride. When I first started, I felt there was a need to get everything done yesterday, and to some degree, that was true. We were a little bit behind the 8-ball in terms of keeping up with our competitors. Incredible growth in visits was occurring and the facilities needed to catch up.

Pats Peak is in a great place right now. The “top 100” things that we wanted to fix — 20 years ago — has shrunk to a list of less than 10. We, for sure, will create another list of improvements going forward, but in terms of fixed physical plant? We like where we are at.

NESJ: Pats Peak has been blessed with long-term leadership from the top down. How has this consistency with the Patenaude family helped the resort succeed over time?

Blomback: Ownership and commitment are the words that come to mind. The Patenaude family has been here since day one, and they are a fantastic family to work for. They have the capacity to weather any events coming their way, and it’s a godsend in keeping us on track. We are not forced to make shortterm decisions, which might jeopardize future successes. We always take the long view and do what’s right for the ski area, and they have a proven record of building successful businesses. Working for Wayne and Sally, they have instilled in our operation to not take shortcuts and to provide the best.

Our team has been intact for a long time, and when someone who has been working with you for 15 years is still referred to as “the new guy,” I think that speaks volumes for what and who you are as a company.

NESJ: Clearly, you enjoy your work there.

Blomback: My one-year stint is on year 28. Why am I still here? First, it’s loyalty. I have always been an individual that sticks around far longer than most others would. That can be a blessing or a curse. In this case I have seen some pretty bleak ski seasons but have hung around to see the fruits of our collective labor come to fruition, and what’s more satisfying than that?

Second is style. It’s not the Patenaudes’ style to micromanage. They told me the ground rules from day one on what they wanted, and I think I am a good foot soldier in carrying those orders out. We invest wisely in the plant, I am a fiscal hawk, and we always do the right thing for the operation. We’ve got a great team here, and I think the family recognizes that. They let us do what needs to be done.

NESJ: How does Pats Peak continue to thrive amidst a highly competitive landscape?

Blomback: What we lack in physical size, of say, the bigger mountains, we leverage up our proximity to the big populations of southern New Hampshire and metro Boston. We’ve got a great senior team here who is always tweaking the products that we offer and tailoring programming to fill the place up. We get a lot of use during the midweek. From sunup to sundown, we are fairly busy.

NESJ: The sport in general is struggling to grow participation. What are some ways the industry can address this issue?

Blomback: We need to make our slopes more accessible to cultures that may not have historical reference of skiing in their upbringing. We work tirelessly in this forum and we’ve had some great success, but we need to do more. We’ve staffed various departments here at the ski area with team members that can speak fluently in other languages. Look, on its best day skiing will never be as easy as going to the beach. Can you imagine learning this sport without being able to speak the language? It’s daunting, and we’re trying to do everything we can to break down barriers. We advertise in Mandarin. We have programming in Spanish. We have a simple banner at our entrance that says “welcome” in 20 different languages.

And, price. We go out of our way to keep skiing affordable. Some of the ticket pricing that I see being talked about at the larger resorts, well, simply put, it’s soul killing. Our industry has a hard enough time breaking out and exposing ourselves to the larger makeup of North America. If the lead story on the nightly news is that lift tickets now cost north of a $175, I don’t know that that’s the narrative we need to draw attention to.

Our industry is constantly trying to figure out how to grow the sport. Is it any coincidence that the industry’s booming years where when there were these little tiny ski areas in the backyards of suburbia? How do people get introduced to the sport? We need to support the small areas that are still left. It’s not rocket science.

At Pats we do all we can to support areas that are smaller around us with discount tickets, reciprocity agreements and a host of other initiatives. It’s no secret that the smaller area feeds us and we in turn feed the larger areas. We work with some larger areas, and it’s a win-win. We add value to our product offerings and we gift wrap them a newly minted skier or snowboarder.

Blomack on Pats’ keys to success

The Passport Program: “The Passport Program was rolled out by Elan skis and we were quick to jump on it. I think the line that sold us was, ‘When someone has a pair of skis in the garage, they’re a skier.’ It was a great answer to our philosophy about removing barriers.”

Adult/Corporate Race League: “I remember the first year (early 1990s), it was about four teams on one night. We said, ‘Well that didn’t work!’ But we stuck with it and around the late ’90s it caught on fire. Flash forward to today and we’re racing on four nights a week with north of 70 teams enrolled — it is now the biggest such league in the state. There are a lot of skiers reliving their golden years as they hit the gates once more. Definitely some Spandex on those nights that might be viewed as offensive to some!”

Women Only Wednesdays: “The WOW programs is a fantastic bit of programming that was rolled out by Ski School a number of years ago. They focus purely on issues that affect women and how to get them to be better skiers and riders. Whether it’s about equipment, mindset or approach, our dedicated group of WOW instructors really puts on a great clinic for people to get better.”

After School Learn to Ski and Ride: “We’ve been teaching over a hundred different schools the sport of skiing since the 1960s.”

Base Lodge Expansion: “The lodge project has been a long time coming and is one of our key drivers of success. Our philosophy is to not borrow money so we had to take a $1 million-plus project and break it into parts that we could digest. It involved enlarging the three A-frames that were on the parking-lot side of the existing building. West A-frame was in 2016. East A-frame was in 2017 and the main A-frame, foundation, utilities, et cetera was fall of 2018. We’ll measure profitability and outlook around March 1st and we’ll make the call to finish the timber frame construction sooner or later depending on cash flow. When finished, the new lodge project will accomplish many things: improved seating area, elevator, entirely new bathrooms, new ski boot-friendly stairs and a brand new entrance. It’s going to look great!”