New Hampshire

A New Hampshire ski resort bets on tech to compete with industry giants

Published

11 months ago

April 5, 2025

A New Hampshire ski resort bets on tech to compete with industry giants

By HOLLY RAMER and AMANDA SWINHART, Associated Press

JACKSON, N.H. — A skier since age 4, Thomas Brennick now enjoys regular trips to New Hampshire’s Black Mountain with his two grandchildren.

“It’s back to the old days,” he said from the Summit Double chairlift on a recent sunny Friday. “It’s just good, old-time skiing at its best.”

Behind the scenes, the experience is now propelled by a high-tech system designed to increase efficiency at the state’s oldest ski area. And while small, independent resorts can’t compete on infrastructure or buying power with conglomerates like Vail, which owns nearby Attitash Mountain Resort and seven others in the Northeast alone, at least one entrepreneur is betting technology will be “a really great equalizer.”

That businessman is Erik Mogensen, who bought Black Mountain last year and turned it into a lab for his ski mountain consultancy, Entabeni Systems. The company builds systems that put lift tickets sales, lesson reservations and equipment rentals online while collecting detailed data to inform decisions such as where to make more snow and how much.

“A lot of general managers will go out and look at how many rows of cars are parked, and that’s kind of how they tell how busy they are,” Mogensen said. “We really want to look at that transactional data down to the deepest level.”

That includes analyzing everything from the most popular time to sell hot dogs in the lodge to how many runs a season pass holder makes per visit.

“The large operators, they can do a lot of things at scale that we can’t. They can buy 20 snow cats at a time, 10 chairlifts, those types of things. We can’t do that, but we’re really nimble,” Mogensen said. “We can decide to change the way we groom very quickly, or change the way we open trails, or change our (food and beverage) menu in the middle of a day.”

Transforming a small-time resort

Mogensen, who says his happiest moments are tied to skiing, started Entabeni Systems in 2015, driven by the desire to keep the sport accessible. In 2023, he bought the company Indy Pass, which allows buyers to ski for two days each at 230 independent ski areas, including Black Mountain. It’s an alternative to the Epic and Ikon multi-resort passes offered by the Vail and Alterra conglomerates.

Black Mountain was an early participant in Indy Pass. When Mogensen learned it was in danger of closing, he was reminded of his hometown’s long-gone ski area. He bought Black Mountain aiming to ultimately transform it into a cooperative.

Many Indy Pass resorts also are clients of Entabeni Systems, including Utah’s Beaver Mountain, which bills itself as the longest continuously-run family owned mountain resort in the U.S.

Kristy Seeholzer, whose husband’s grandfather founded Beaver Mountain, said Entabeni streamlined its ticketing and season pass system. That led to new, lower-priced passes for those willing to forgo skiing during holiday weeks or weekends, she said.

“A lot of our season pass holders were self-limiting anyway. They only want to ski weekdays because they don’t want to deal with weekends,” she said. “We could never have kept track of that manually.”

Though she is pleased overall, Seeholzer said the software can be challenging and slow.

“There are some really great programs out there, like on the retail side of things or the sales side of things. And one of the things that was a little frustrating was it felt like we were reinventing the wheel,” she said.

Not everyone is a fan

Sam Shirley, 25, grew up skiing in New Hampshire and worked as a ski instructor and ski school director in Maine while attending college. But he said increasing technology has drastically changed the way he skis, pushing him to switch mostly to cross-country.

“As a customer, it’s made things more complicated,” he said. “It just becomes an extra hassle.”

Shirley used to enjoy spur-of-the-moment trips around New England, but has been put off by ski areas reserving lower rates for those who buy tickets ahead. He doesn’t like having to provide detailed contact information, sometimes even a photograph, just to get a lift ticket.

It’s not just independent ski areas that are focused on technology and data. Many others are using lift tickets and passes embedded with radio frequency identification chips that track skiers’ movements.

Vail Resorts pings cell phones to better understand how lift lines are forming, which informs staffing decisions, said John Plack, director of communications. Lift wait times have decreased each year for the past three years, with 97% under 10 minutes this year, he said.

“Our company is a wildly data-driven company. We know a lot about our guest set. We know their tastes. We know what they like to ski, we know when they like to ski. And we’re able to use that data to really improve the guest experience,” he said.

How the big guys battle meager winters

That improvement comes at a cost. A one-day lift ticket at Vail’s Keystone Resort in Colorado sold for $292 last week. A season pass cost $418, a potentially good deal for diehard skiers, but also a reliable revenue stream guaranteeing Vail a certain amount of income even as ski areas face less snow and shorter winters.

The revenue from such passes, especially the multi-resort Epic Pass, allowed the company to invest $100 million in snowmaking, Plack said.

“By committing to the season ahead of time, that gives us certainty and allows us to reinvest in our resorts,” he said.

Mogensen insists bigger isn’t always better, however. Lift tickets at Black Mountain cost $59 to $99 per day and a season’s pass is about $450.

“You don’t just come skiing to turn left and right. You come skiing because of the way the hot chocolate tastes and the way the fire pit smells and what spring skiing is and what the beer tastes like and who you’re around,” he said. “Skiing doesn’t have to be a luxury good. It can be a community center.”

Brennick, the Black Mountain lift rider who was skiing with his grandchildren, said he has noticed a difference since the ski area was sold.

“I can see the change,” he said. “They’re making a lot of snow and it shows.”

___

Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

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New Hampshire

New Hampshire employment law in 2026 – NH Business Review

Published

8 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

New Hampshire employment law in 2026 – NH Business Review

What employers are getting wrong, and how to fix it before it becomes a claim

New Hampshire’s employment law landscape heading into 2026 may not be dramatically different from last year, but the real risks lie in implementation missteps. From the initial setting of wages, to calculating and distributing wages, employers will likely find a specific statute and/or labor regulation governing the transaction. Failure to follow these detailed wage and hour laws can result in significant back wages and other penalties being imposed by the state or federal Department of Labor following an audit. Fortunately, however, this area of employment law is relatively easy to master, once you are familiar with the basics.

Notice compliance

One of the most common pitfalls for employers in New Hampshire is misunderstanding the wage and hour notice requirements under RSA 275 and the related New Hampshire Department of Labor Administrative Rules.

At the time of hire, employers must notify employees in writing of their rate of pay and the day and place of payment. This notice is traditionally delivered to employees by way of an offer letter or some sort of “New Hire Rate of Pay” form. (A sample form is available from the New Hampshire Department of Labor website.) What surprises most employers, however, is that Lab. 803.03(f)(6) also requires employers to request and obtain their employees’ signatures on this written notification of wages, and employers must keep a copy of the signed written notification of wages on file. Further, employers must notify employees in writing during the course of employment of any changes to wages or day of pay prior to such changes taking effect, and the employer must obtain the employee’s signature on this subsequent notification as well. (See RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)

Employers are further required to notify employees in writing, or through a posted notice maintained in a place accessible to employees, of:

• employment practices and policies with regard to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits.

• deductions made from the employee’s payroll check, for each period such deductions are made.

• information regarding the deductions allowed from wage payments under state law. (RSA 275:49; Lab. 803.03.)

Policies regarding vacation and sick leave should inform employees whether or not the employer will “cash out” unused time at year end or at the end of employment, and if so, under what terms. Again, if any changes are made to vacation pay, sick leave and other fringe benefits during the course of employment (all of which are considered “wages” under New Hampshire law), employers must request and obtain their employees’ signatures on the written notification of the change, and must keep a copy of the signed form on file. (Lab. 803.03.) Importantly, notification by way of pay stub alone is not sufficient, and, these requirements apply to both increases and decreases in pay.

Two-hour minimum (reporting pay)

Another frequently overlooked obligation is New Hampshire’s two-hour minimum reporting pay requirement. Under RSA 275:43-a, non-exempt employees who report to work but are sent home early must generally be paid for at least two hours. Weather-related closures, client cancellations or operational slowdown days can trigger this rule. Employers should also note that the New Hampshire Department of Labor currently applies this law to remote-based employees. Consequently, employees who “report to work” at an employer’s request from a home office may likewise have a right to two hours of pay, depending on the circumstances.

Salaried vs. hourly employees

Misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime remains a significant source of compliance exposure. The position’s job duties — not the titles or label such as “salaried” — determine whether an employee qualifies for an overtime exemption.

Employers, particularly in nonprofits, health care and small businesses, unintentionally misapply exempt classifications to roles such as administrative staff, office managers, executive assistants, program coordinators or hybrid jobs that involve significant non-exempt tasks. Over time, as organizational needs evolve and employees take on broader responsibilities, job duties can drift outside of an exemption’s scope.

Best practice is to periodically review job descriptions and actual job duties to ensure continued compliance with exemption criteria, particularly following any significant restructuring or job redesigns.

Peg O’Brien is chair of McLane Middleton’s Employment Law Practice Group. She can be reached at margaret.o’brien@mclane.com.

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New Hampshire

New photo released in unsolved 1997 homicide of a N.H. woman

Published

20 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

New photo released in unsolved 1997 homicide of a N.H. woman

Local News

“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” said the family of the victim.

A new photo has been released of the victim in a nearly 30-year-long unsolved murder case, in the hope of finding any new potential witnesses in the cold case, New Hampshire officials said.

“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” the family of Rosalie Miller said in a press release. “We miss her and want to give her peace.”

Miller was last seen on December 8, 1996 at her apartment in Manchester. At the time of her disappearance, Miller had plans on meeting friends in the Auburn, New Hampshire area, officials said.

Her body was found on January 20, 1997 in a partially wooded spot on a residential lot along the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn, officials said in the release.

The autopsy report declared Miller’s death a homicide by asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation, N.H. officials wrote.

As part of a new effort to garner public help with the case, an “uncirculated” photo of Miller, 36, is being distributed “in hopes it may jog the memory of someone who saw or spoke with her in the winter of 1996,” Attorney General John M. Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall announced on behalf of the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit in a joint press release.

Investigators are especially hoping to talk to anyone who was in contact with Miller in December of 1996 or anyone “who may have seen her in the vicinity of the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn during that time,” officials said in the release.

The newly released photo of Rosalie Miller, 36, who was strangled to death nearly 30 years ago. – Attorney General John M. Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall

“We are releasing this new photograph today because we believe someone out there has information, perhaps a detail they thought was insignificant at the time, that could be the key to solving this case and bringing justice for Rosalie and those who loved her,” Senior Assistant Attorney General R. Christopher Knowles, New Hampshire Cold Case Unit Chief said in the release.

The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit encourages anyone with any amount of information to contact the group at [email protected] or (603) 271-2663.