Podcast #210: Mt. Hood Meadows President and General Manager Greg Pack

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Who

Greg Pack, President and General Manager of Mt. Hood Meadows, Oregon

Recorded on

April 28, 2025

About Mt. Hood Meadows

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The Drake Family (and other minority shareholders)

Located in: Mt. Hood, Oregon

Year founded: 1968

Pass affiliations:

* Indy Pass – 2 days, select blackouts

* Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Summit (:17), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:19), Cooper Spur (:23), Timberline (:26)

Base elevation: 4,528 feet

Summit elevation: 7,305 feet at top of Cascade Express; 9,000 feet at top of hike-to permit area; 11,249 feet at summit of Mount Hood

Vertical drop: 2,777 feet lift-served; 4,472 hike-to inbounds; 6,721 feet from Mount Hood summit

Skiable acres: 2,150

Average annual snowfall: 430 inches

Trail count: 87 (15% beginner, 40% intermediate, 15% advanced, 30% expert)

Lift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 5 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mount Hood Meadows’ lift fleet)

About Cooper Spur

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The Drake Family

Located in: Mt. Hood, Oregon

Year founded: 1927

Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Mt. Hood Meadows (:22), Summit (:29), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:30), Timberline (:37)

Base elevation: 3,969 feet

Summit elevation: 4,400 feet

Vertical drop: 431 feet

Skiable acres: 50

Average annual snowfall: 250 inches

Trail count: 9 (1 most difficult, 7 more difficult, 1 easier)

Lift count: 2 (1 double, 1 ropetow – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Cooper Spur’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

Volcanoes are weird. Oh look, an exploding mountain. Because that seems reasonable. Volcanoes sound like something imagined, like dragons or teleportation or dinosaurs*. “So let me get this straight,” I imagine some puzzled Appalachian miner, circa 1852, responding to the fellow across the fire as he tells of his adventures in the Oregon Territory, “you expect me to believe that out thataways they got themselves mountains that just blow their roofs off whenever they feel like it, and shoot off fire and rocks and gas for 50 mile or more, and no one never knows when it’s a’comin’? You must think I’m dumber’n that there tree stump.”

Turns out volcanoes are real. How humanity survived past day one I have no idea. But here we are, skiing on volcanoes instead of tossing our virgins from the rim as a way of asking the nice mountain to please not explode (seriously how did anyone make it out of the past alive?).

And one of the volcanoes we can ski on is Mount Hood. This actually seems more un