Ski resort’s general manager retires after four years on the job

Tom Day’s experience as Gunstock Mountain Resort’s general manager has been a bit out of the norm compared to other bosses. Like others, he had to manage the business through the COVID pandemic, but unlike most others he also had climate change and politics to factor into his decision-making.

As he prepares to retire at the end of the current ski season, Day looks back on his four years at the helm of Gunstock Mountain with pride and self-assurance at how he and his team improved operations at the four-season resort.

By improving the visitor experience to the resort, they also increased profits to Belknap County, which owns the resort and oversees its operations through the Gunstock Mountain Commission.

“When I got here, the senior team was ready to put the pedal to the metal,” said Day.

Day is turning 70. He took over at Gunstock in January 2000. He’d been at Waterville Valley for several years until 2010, working up from lift attendant to director of mountain operations. After Waterville, he worked outside the ski industry in several executive roles, including chair of the board of Dome Industries and general manager of the Hooksett Welcome Centers.

Upon arriving at Gunstock, his assessment of the resort’s needs wasn’t so much of an overhaul as it was a series of tweaks: improvements to snow-making, improvements on on-time openings, improvements to how equipment rentals are handled.

A lot of what Day imagined to improve the resort were brought on more quickly by the COVID pandemic.

A ‘comfortable experience’

“COVID made us do all the things I wanted to do. COVID forced that to happen — I wanted to limit ticket sales. I wanted to limit discounting. You know, you can sell less tickets and make more money if you’re not giving them away,” said Day.

“We implemented stuff that I would have wanted to do anyways but might have been met with more resistance by the public,” he added. “Well, all of a sudden they got used to limited ticket sales, buying tickets online, getting rentals online. I wanted everything to be online, because then you eliminate all the lines.”

During COVID, pretty much everyone geared up in the parking lot as boot bags weren’t allowed in the lodges. After COVID, boot bags brought to the lodge had to be stored in lockers or with the free bag storage offered by the mountain. That eliminated clutter in the lodge. He carpeted the big cafeteria upstairs in the main lodge, which eliminated the clatter of ski boots on the hardwood floor, making it less noisy.

“To me, this was an opportunity. The size of this place is just right,” said Day. “We had an opportunity to really change what the experience was. We’re not a big conglomerate. I wanted to be what they weren’t.

That was a comfortable experience, clean, well-kept buildings, making sure that you had minimal amount of lines.”

Over the years, overseeing $12 million in improvements to the resort, the user experience and the bottom line were uppermost in Day’s mind. For instance, he had the tubing park redone — he shortened it and improved the lift to get to the top of the run.

While the tube ride was a little shorter, riders got more rides down the hill for their two-hour ticket because of the shorter run and faster lift.

“They were getting their 10 runs in two hours instead of three runs,” he said. “We were churning and burning, so we’re making more money because we were getting people up there faster, and they were getting their eight or 10 runs and they were happy.”

Other self-funded improvements included a new maintenance shop, ski shop, lodge renovations, improved dining options and paving the main parking lot.

Guns ablaze

Improved snow-making has been key for skiing and boarding. “Snow-making/grooming is hugely important,” said Day.

With climate change and warmer winters, resulting in less natural snow, snow-making is the No. 1 consideration to getting open in December and having as much skiable terrain as possible before the ever-critical Christmas vacation week. Then, it’s important to maintain the base of 2 feet.

The ideal temperature range to make snow is 15-18 degrees, according to Day. When all the guns are firing, they’re running up a tab of $2,500 per hour.

“You’re 100% dependent on it,” said Day.

“We’ve got a big snow-making system here, and in the right temperatures, we can run 150 guns.

So we can put a lot of snow down fast, which is good. At one point, we had more trails open than some of our bigger competitors up north.”

As the operator of a ski mountain, he’s a snow farmer.

“We grow it, and then we go till it and manage it,” he said.

The man-made snow, once it’s packed and groomed, becomes almost impermeable to the rains that come and go during a typical winter in this region.

“Man-made snow is pretty bulletproof,” said Day, noting that the heavy rain in December, while it put a damper on skier visits, didn’t damage the trails or infrastructure in the way it did other areas.

“We had 26 trails before we had three inches of rain, and we had 26 trails after the rain, because man-made snow is so dense. It’s not like natural snow — water soaks into the snow and it just disappears. Man-made snow is so dense that the rain kind of rolls off it,” he said.

Gunstock Commission politics

With a private business enterprise, the boss answers to a board of directors. Gunstock Mountain Resort is a public entity, owned by Belknap County, so Day answers to a five-member commission appointed by the county’s delegation, which is made up of members of the NH House of Representatives from Belknap County.

In the summer of 2023, Day and his senior team resigned en masse amidst a tussle with certain elements within the oversight commission that wanted to manage shortterm and longer-term projects. That resignation put the ski season in doubt, because of the volume of work necessary beforehand.

It also came to light that Day made two donations, using Gunstock money, to the reelection campaign of Gov. Chris Sununu, something he had done during his time at Waterville Valley — the difference being that Waterville Valley is not publicly owned. The attorney general’s office found that Day unintentionally violated state law banning public funds used for electioneering.

Day and his team had the backing of the public and, after a change in the Gunstock Area Commission membership, they returned to their posts. He wasn’t fazed then, and he’s not fazed now about the politics that came with the position.

“I’m confident with what I do, and I’m very sure of myself, so I think that helped,” said Day. “You can’t be intimidated by someone when you know your business and you probably know way better than they do. I’m very enthusiastic and I think that doesn’t hurt when you’re making changes.”

Gunstock’s 10-year plan

There is a 10-year plan to expand the skiable terrain and build a destination hotel on the property. That’ll take some work, according to Day, especially since the county doesn’t own the property proposed for expansion and will likely have to incur some debt to fully build out the plan.

He believes what he believed when he arrived four years ago that continued tweaks will make it better.

“I think what needs to happen here is that we need to keep tuning up what we have before we go somewhere else,” he said, pointing to more snow-making and lift improvements. “What needs to happen is we need to keep tweaking this place and making it that much nicer.”

Day and the team must be doing something right. The online skiing reservations sell out most Saturdays and Sundays.

For the 2022-23 fiscal year, Gunstock paid the county $351,901, the highest return ever. It was $320,000 the prior fiscal year and $220,000 the year before — a total of some $892,000 over a three-year stretch.

By law, the resort turns over 1.75% of its profits to Belknap County. There’s a bill in the Legislature now that seeks to increase that payment to 3%. The five-member commission opposes the change.

According to the Laconia Daily Citizen account of Commission Chair Doug Lambert’s comments, legislation “should be formed with the intention of fixing a problem or responding to the needs and wishes of the majority of the public being represented. The proposed bill does neither.”

Lambert credits Day with turning Gunstock “into a financially sound operation that has become self-supporting and able to improve and expand its infrastructure.”

“Tom has led his team in developing innovative ways to create new sources of revenue that augment the flagship ski business to better defend against the ups and downs of a weather-driven industry,” added Lambert.

“His vision for the potential for Gunstock, to be a world-class recreational resort, is evident wherever one looks throughout the property. The energy and enthusiasm that Tom brought in his leadership role is reflected throughout the staff and employees, from top down.”

Day is slated to leave at the end of the ski season, and is on the search committee for his replacement.