It's the end of an era.  EpicSki.com will shut down later this week.  The announcement was made today (see below).

Quote:Originally Posted by MtnNews 

The EpicSki forum will no longer be available after April 28, 2017, due to our current hosting provider discontinuing its forum services. 
  
We appreciate and thank all of the forum members, moderators and site managers for your years of dedication and contribution to the conversation and community.

Those EpicSki members who would like to retain their photo albums, unofficial guides, and all other content should download that to their personal storage device by no later than noon MDT on Thursday, April 27, 2017.

SAD!!

What is sad is this has been going on between mountain corp and huddler for several months but mtn/VAIL decided to pull the plug and give four days notice. Shame on VAIL.

A lot of my forum posts and perhaps some recent articles contain photos that link back to EpicSki.  Those pics go POOF on Friday:-(

Simply awful.  Why would they shut down a blog that brings business?  

Sad to see. Unfortunate naming issue, Classic case of the when the big boys crash your party....

oldensign wrote:

Sad to see. Unfortunate naming issue, Classic case of the when the big boys crash your party....

Oh!  Now I understand.

Yep, Previous owner who grew out of the ranks of the community was in a life moment and Vail made an offer that couldn't be refused. They coveted the name then they were content with allowing the crazies run the asylum as long as it was paying the bills. The fatal mistake appears to have been made when Epic migrated to the Huddler platform from vbulletin. Huddler is going away and Vail Resorts does not want to pay the bill to migrate to another platform, There is a ton of content there that will be come lost in the digital maze. Such a waste.

For anyone interested in history, Mountain News Corp (MNC) made the offer to buy EpicSki.com several years ago.  MNC was a print/media company that had been bought by Vail Corp a little earlier.  The management directly responsible for EpicSki was within MNC.  The former President of EpicSki retired completely from any involvement with the forum a few months after the sale to MNC.  A Site Manager has been running EpicSki since then, reporting to a MNC manager who has a full-time job dealing with OnTheSnow and the European version of OTS.

The move to the Huddler software platform included a revenue sharing agreement.  Later on, that changed to a standard service contract.  By then, moving to another platform was not an option.  I assume because of the time/money required.  Huddler was bought by Wikia last year.  Apparently Wikia had no interest in the software.  Perhaps they wanted the people.  In any case, there will no longer be websites using Huddler when contracts end in 2017.  Data migrations are not easy because of the complexity of the Huddler platform.  MNC was looking into the technical aspects of a conversion for a while but obviously the situation changed recently.

EpicSki was unique in it's history and reach.  It will be missed.

wgo wrote:

Thanks for the clear summary. There's probably a lesson to be learned in there, but I don't know what it is. Apart from the fact that data migrations are difficult.

It's more complicated than the technical issues related to a database migration from the Huddler platform.  A lot of management decisions in the last 18 years led to the situation this week.  But I think it's fair to say that the choice of Huddler was not the best fit for what was an interactive forum with mostly volunteer support keeping things going, not a commercial site selling products.  The other websites that used Huddler had revenue sources beyond a few sponsors and advertisers.  So they could afford to make a business decision soon enough to get off Huddler in time.

The one thing I don't get: why not do like lots of sites, and instead of migrating, just relaunch with a similar format on a new platform, drop the content, and make everyone register and start over?  

MNC owns the URL, everyone already has it bookmarked...  A lot of the content was seasonal anyway, or can be recreated by the community.

Reisen wrote:

The one thing I don't get: why not do like lots of sites, and instead of migrating, just relaunch with a similar format on a new platform, drop the content, and make everyone register and start over?  

 

MNC owns the URL, everyone already has it bookmarked...  A lot of the content was seasonal anyway, or can be recreated by the community.

In my professional life, I dealt with "large databases" used fo statistical research purposes.  My definition of "large" was essentially "when standard procedures are not going to work."  EpicSki has 55,000 accounts, even if only half are active, that's a lot more than most ski forums.  The membership is international, mostly from North America but Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Europe are well represented. Many of the active posters were over 40.  Active Moderators kept things for devolving too much, at least most of the time.  Parents of high schoolers had no reason to be concerned if their kids participated in discussions.  (Ever read TGR?)

The content on EpicSki was built up over 18 years, not 18 months.  The content includes Articles and long discussions by industry professionals, including very experienced instructors and trainers who were actively involved in Epic Ski Academy clinics from 2003-2011.  The number of trip reports from just the last 3-4 years in the archives is impressive.  JimK was one of many who contributed professional level material in terms of writing, photography, and videos.  A few parents generated detailed trip reports about family trips that were a great resource for parents planning their first family ski vacation to a big mountain.  Little of that can be easily re-created in a season or two.

EpicSki is not owned by a dedicated founder/owner like Scott and those who keep SkiSoutheast or TheSkiDiva going.  EpicSki was sold to a corporate owner that is part of a larger corporation.  The current owner is not interested in a forum.  They find OnTheSnow interactions sufficient.

There is a spin off from EpicSki that was started a couple seasons ago.  It will have some of the same members, but it will never be the same as EpicSki.  Just as a Yahoo! Group that got re-created as a Facebook Group was not really the same.  Been there, done that.

For those who may wonder . . . I've been a volunteer EpicSki Moderator for a few years, after lurking for several years before that.

That's really sad to hear, it was a great resource for me to learn about different resorts and to pick which to visit. I hope that a similar community can sprout somewhere else.

For skiing in the northeast, there is a new forum getting starting.  I gather that the founder of Northeast Mountain Sports was a member of AlpineZone.  Only the framework at the moment.  It may be more Boston-centric than NYC-centric initially.  Since my daughter is in school near Boston for a few years, I'll keep an eye on it.

http://www.northeastmountainsports.com

I know this is a sad day for lots of people.  But I'm really laughing at the thread on epicski about the closure.  The ammount of people that have 0 knowledge of things like data migration, frameworks, hosting, the cost of doing business, intellectual property and TM infringement is hilarious.

I hope another great ski community comes around.  However much like the comment above about the migration from a yahoo group to a facebook group and it not being the same- I was a member of a message board with thousands of active members.  The owner decided to shut it down.  Someone else opened a new board with the same theme.  And maybe a thousand people made the migration.  5 years later and there are 10 active members involved.  It sucks when great things come to an end.  Long live DC ski.  This is one of my favorite websites.  Thanks for keeping it open Scott!

There was some scrambling by MNC in the last day or two.  End result is that the deadline was extended to May 12, 2017.  Mainly to give individuals more time to download their own content.

Quote:Originally Posted by MtnNews 

We have worked out an agreement with our forum hosting provider to extend the closing of the EpicSki forum for an additional two weeks, until May 12, 2017. 

We listened and heard you loud and clear that many would like to move the content to another provider. Unfortunately, there are a number of operational, legal and other considerations that make selling or giving the archive to someone else very difficult. The two-week extension is intended to give you more time to download your content before the forum closes.

Those EpicSki members who would like to retain their photo albums, unofficial guides, and all other user content should download those items to their personal storage device by no later than 11:00 am MDT on Friday, May 12, 2017. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

We know this news came as a surprise and we empathize with those who feel we didn’t provide ample warning to users to download their content. We appreciate our forum hosting provider for working with us to extend the site closing date for an additional two weeks to give users more time to make arrangements.

Your passionate, thoughtful posts, guides and photos have been inspirational to the community. We will miss the conversation and appreciate your participation and input on EpicSki.com over the years.

Best regards,

The Mountain News Team