Okemo Mountain Resort — Hotel in Ludlow

Okemo, under the Muellers management, was always a great place for families to ski considering that it is an eastern resort with variable weather. However, the resort was purchased a few years ago by Vail Resorts who operate the Epic pass. People with this pass can ski at any of a number of resorts. Last year, according to the New York Times, Vail sold so many passes, that on one particular weekend there was chaos in Sunapee, a resort operated by Vail in New Hampshire. There were also chaotic conditions in Ludlow, where Okemo is situated. There was traffic all the way through town disrupting the day to day activities of locals and impacting the air quality. Ski resorts are outside activities where one should expect to breathe pure air. Locals should not have to suffer lower quality air as Vail makes snow and skiers drive in. It goes without saying that a ski resort operator should use 100% renewable electricity. Vail Resorts claim in their Progress Report 2021-2022 season:- “this year, we reached 100% renewable electricity across all of our North American mountain Resorts,….” Really?????? What would a reasonable person reading that statement take it to mean? you might be forgiven for believing that Okemo operated on 100% renewable energy? Right? I have spoken to several members of Vail management at Okemo and they tell me there is no firm plan for installing any renewable energy. At the moment, I was told by a Vail employee that, when Vail is making snow, it uses 12,000 gallons of fuel per day and pumps up 9,000 gallons of water per minute. How much is this activity contributing to pollution and global warming and why is Vail not doing anything to offset it locally?? There are no high speed electric car chargers at the main parking lots near the Clock Tower main area. According to Vail management there is no plan to install any electric chargers in the near future. In the past few years I have seen desperate visitors plugging 110 volt cords into any outlet they can find in order to get a charge and be able to drive home. You would think Vail, a consumer business, might be interested in helping their visitors. If you ask Vail Management about electric charging they routinely tell you there are chargers at Jackson Gore. The only problem is that Jackson Gore is over 3 miles from the clock tower. If you don’t own a Tesla it will take 12 hours to charge your car! How does that work for a day visitor? Doesn’t this seem like a rather one sided deal? Vail sells more passes and makes more money, while locals and visitors have to breathe dirtier air and skiers have to contend with longer lift lines. The Biden administration has just passed a massive infrastructure bill that sets the tone: electric charging is very important, electric cars are coming fast and environmental protection is job one. Prior to the change of management I would have rated Okemo a four star resort for families. I am now revising this to a failing grade because of the gap between what Vail states in their progress report and what one sees on the ground; lack of preparation for customer electric car needs, dirty air and environmental shortcomings. In addition as of today, December 27, 2022, according to the Okemo web site there are only 59 out of 126 trails open. We tested the conditions a few weeks ago and found that even on blue intermediate slopes conditions were extremely icy. In fact these were the very worst conditions that we have ever experienced at Okemo- so much so that we had to stop after a few runs because my wife lost confidence. Vail needs to be more forthright on their web site about what conditions are...

UPDATE: After speaking with Kaylie who manages the ski and ride school they issued a lesson refund. I felt she provided excellent customer service and am changing my rating based on that.

This review is strictly about my lesson with Okemo Ski and Ride School. Okemo itself is an excellent resort, and my family and I had a great trip. Hotel staff was great, and the snow tubing, Timber Ripper, and skiing were great. If I just could rate the ski and ride school, I would have. I'd come again, but never take another lesson here.

Background, I'm a beginner skier. I've been skiing roughly 5 or 6 times and taken 3 other lessons at different areas around New England. This is one of the worst lessons I've had. I paid for a full-day adult lesson package. 4 adults were scheduled, and 3 showed up. I was not as advanced as the other 2 students, so we broke off into groups. I essentially had a private lesson, which should have been great! Unfortunately, it wasn't. My instructor was a snowboarder and hockey player, and by his own admission, "wasn't really a skier." This was an immediate red flag.

He was pleasant, and asked me what I wanted to learn, and I explained I needed to gain confidence with J turns, Christie turns, and parallel skiing which I had learned in a lesson earlier this season. I need to get more control of stopping on slopes without resorting to wedging. He said I should just learn "hockey stops" as he was a hockey player and could teach me those. I had never heard of them in skiing but kept an open mind.

We went up the practice slope, and he asked me what I wanted to do, which was the second red flag, and became a theme for the rest of the day. I did a few runs, and he disinterestedly was like, "Yeah, yeah. You're doing alright, but with no real feedback or instructions." About an hour in, the head instructor came out, who immediately assessed me and began teaching HIM how to teach ME, with specific drills and critique.

As soon as she left 20 minutes later he contradicted what she said, and just pretty much followed me around while I used the practice slope, then I told him I wanted to do a green trail. So we got up there, and he said, "Uh, so what do you want to do?" Which honestly freaked me out because I've never had a ski instructor give zero direction. He also asked if I wanted to "just end the lesson early, since I seemed to be doing OK." Which made it seem like he really didn't even want to be there.

Bottom line, while he was nice, he was completely incompetent. I spent a lot of money on a ski lesson and would have been better off just buying a lift ticket and practicing by myself without an "instructor" tagging along being no help. I was too nice to ask to be put in another group or have a different teacher, but I should have, and I regret it.

Also, my 8 year old son was separated from his group during a lesson and had to be found and recovered by ski patrol, and we were never made aware of this! Thankfully, he was OK, but they never called my wife, who was emergency contact! We found out that they had lost him when we came to pick him up!

Again, Okemo itself is a great ski resort, but after the experience we had with the Ski School, I'd never purchase a lesson...

This review is on our dealings in navigating an injury at Okemo and the process/experience in filing a claim with Epic.

To the point, our “lesson learned” is to file a claim immediately upon injury even if you think it’s not that bad. This is what Epic Coverage customer service offered in the end. They added that you can always cancel a claim and reinstate your pass should an injury heal up. I take that with a grain of salt as I am not confident with Epic as a result of their contribution to the process and how they navigated things. Feels very corporate. Representatives were all very pleasant but they sounded like they were reading from a script.

The experience: hopefully this helps anyone that might find themselves in a similar situation in the future. This was our first time experiencing an injury and the need to file a claim.

We bought a 3 day epic pass for the 23/24 season. On opening weekend, my gf incurred an injury her first run down. We ended up calling the medic and she was brought down on a sled. The medics were great!! Very friendly. My gf was cleared and discharged and told to R.I.C.E. (rest, ice, compress, and elevate). We dropped them off a bottle of wine the next day to say thanks ☺️ Note: (no mention to us on filing a claim. Turns out there is a 30 day window to do so. We will file immediately should this ever happen again).

Over the course of the next couple of months, my gf continued to experience bouts of pain to the injured area. After her knee gave out and she collapsed in the driveway, we scheduled a doctor’s appointment. Something wasn’t right. She then contacted Epic for clarification on how to file a claim. We both found the info on the website hard to understand, clearly and confidently. Upon calling Epic for help in the matter, their representative informed her that she would need a doctor’s note first to then be able to file a claim. (Apparently this is false. We should have filed first and provided a doctor’s note, later. This affected our case). This call was on March 18th. She had her doctor fill out the provided form that Epic gave us and we then filed a claim on April 25th. We did exactly as we were instructed.

Our claim was denied based on the reasoning that we filed outside the core season dates. That deadline was on April 17th, eight days prior to her doctor’s appointment and us submitting the doctor’s note. No mention of this deadline was made at the time we had initially called Epic. Otherwise, we would have complied with that. I appealed this decision and called a couple of times as we attempted to navigate and understand their process better. In all, I found them not willing to entertain much of a conversation, nor did they seem to have any desire to exercise any accountability. We were hoping to, at the least, meet somewhere in the...