Hey everybody, welcome to the Blister podcast on the Blister Podcast Network.

I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, and you can check out everything we're doing and reviewing over at

blisterreview.com.

This past week, I was back in the Wood River Valley, spending time in Haley and Ketchum and

Sun Valley, and I had the opportunity to make good on something I've wanted to do for over a year

now, and that is to dig in a bit deeper to all that is going on at the Sun Valley Ski Education

Foundation.

And I guess we can say up front,

we definitely will not in this conversation be sort of going into everything that the

SVSEF is up to.

But what we will present for you here is a very interesting conversation that touches on

a whole lot of important issues that range from how we are thinking about sport itself conceived

as broadly as possible in at least this country. But also also I feel like this conversation could slot in

as another episode in our Mountain Town Economics series. And in addition to those two things,

today you are also going to get to meet Will Brandenburg, who is the Alpine Program Director for the Sun Valley

Ski Education Foundation, and Will's personal story is an extremely interesting one too, and it is certainly

a story that has informed his own perspective on topics like how ought we to be thinking about sports in this country

and issues like mountain town economics and how we can support and help small community ski areas

and how small ski areas can bring more and more people and kids into the sports of skiing and

snowboarding.

And so with that, let's go ahead and get to my conversation with Will Brandenburg.

Here we go.

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