Keystone Mountain Resort has continued to make history since it opened to the public in 1970.
Nestled in the Colorado Rockies, Keystone was one of the first ski areas in the region to make its own snow, paying a then-princely sum of $350,000 to install a snowmaking system in 1972. It was also among the first U.S. mountain parks to introduce night skiing after building a mountainside lighting system in 1985. And did we mention the Keystone Conference Center was the largest venue built in the Rockies when it opened in 1989 at a cost of $10 million?
Later this winter, Keystone will add another chapter to that history when it hosts the 53rd annual National Brotherhood of Snowsports (NBS) Summit from Feb. 28 to March 8. It will mark the first time in the event’s history that it will take place at the same resort in back-to-back years.
The NBS Summit brings together 60 member clubs and hundreds of supporters from around the globe. Its mandate is to encourage increased participation in winter sports while also supporting the development of athletes of color to compete on the international stage. The event will feature skiing and riding across Keystone’s three peaks (Dercum, North Peak and Outback) along with racing, youth programming, cultural celebrations and a welcome parade.
Kate Schifani, Keystone’s senior director of mountain operations, says staff and management are thrilled to be hosting the event for the second year in a row. “One of the things I love about NBS is that they’re just a fun group, really fun. The stroke is high. They bring some folks that don’t even ski but just love ski culture and come hang out,” she said. “And being inclusive is one of our values as a company. We have a lot of outreach programs. NBS has been an awesome partner for our company in that regard. We believe that the future of our sport is inclusion and the more people that we can get excited about it, the better.”
The previous NBS Summit at Keystone drew a record-setting total of more than 1,500 attendees, a figure that could be even higher for this year’s summit as organizers are expecting about 1,800 guests. Schifani says it’s a distinct honor for Keystone to be the first venue chosen to host the event in consecutive years.
“Last year, I thought our team on the mountainside executed really well, and the hospitality side executed super well. Obviously, they decided to come back [this year], so hopefully they had that experience as well,” she said. “I think the big thing is [we provided] a comprehensive experience that is maybe unique out there. Besides the mountainside, we have a large hospitality footprint and that’s everything from the lodge and spa to condos. We have a wide variety of options. What I hope is that [we] provided them with such a good time that they wanted to do it here again.”
NBS president Henri Rivers says that his organization is excited to be returning to Keystone for its 53rd summit. “Last year’s event set a new standard, from the warm welcome of the resort staff to the incredible mountain experience on and off the slopes,” Rivers said in a statement. “Coming back reflects both our gratitude for that hospitality and our excitement to build on it. The Summit is where our community comes together to celebrate who we are, support our athletes and inspire the next generation of skiers and riders.”
While the NBS Summit runs for just seven days, planning begins well in advance. In fact, Schifani says Keystone staff began planning for this year’s summit within days of last year’s event wrapping up. That planning process involved virtually every member of Keystone’s staff. That included the competition services, terrain park, lifts and ski patrols teams. The resort’s food and beverage and hospitality teams also played a key role in preparing for this year’s event.
Those teams have been meeting bi-weekly since 2024 to make sure everyone involved is on the same page and there are no unexpected surprises. They have also been meeting regularly with NBS officials to make sure any needs or concerns are addressed in a timely fashion. That said, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, Schifani explains.
“We host and do events and fun activations fairly often through the season, so it’s not doing anything super unique per se. We’re just doing a lot of the things that we do all in one week,” she said. “I think that’s maybe a little bit unique when you stack them all up like that. You just really want to make sure that the logistics of that are all fluid and there isn’t any gap or break in what we’re doing.”
Although the same amount of planning has gone into preparing for this year’s summit, Schifani acknowledges it has been a little easier with the gift of hindsight. “I think we’re in a little bit different situation this year because we’ve done it once, and we know what we want to make better,” she said. “We learned some things about the kind of races that we want to do and where we want to have a couple of race venues. It was like, ‘Maybe if we moved this one from Dutchman to Go Devil.’ We also learned some things with our hospitality team – what went really well and [what] we definitely want to repeat.”
Perhaps one of the biggest logistical challenges in hosting an event like the NBS Summit is making sure that a large number of guests can move from one area to another with ease and the wait to access facilities is relatively minimal. Schifani says that’s why a considerable number of resources is devoted to getting the initial load of guests onto the mountainside. That includes deploying a small army of staff to the lift area early on to keep lineups to a minimum. “We’re really fortunate to have a great lift system. And the mountain’s pretty thoughtful in its layout. Once we’re through kind of that initial load, we can spread people out pretty well,” she said.
Grooming will be one of the top priorities for Keystone’s mountainside staff during the NBS Summit, including first tracks and breakfast tracks and where to locate them to ensure some perfect corduroy for the day’s first skiers. Staff will also work closely with the NBS team to address any grooming pattern requests they might have and how to improve the overall ski experience.
The resort’s public safety and mountain operations teams will meet up with NBS officials in the weeks leading up to the summit to finalize a safety plan. Schifani says that the safety plan isn’t likely to deviate much from what the resort normally does.
“One of the things I love about NBS coming back is that for this one-week period, our mountain looks different because we have this super high concentration of black skiers, which is amazing. To see the passion that they bring to our sport and the inclusivity and the way we connect to other communities in our area is fantastic,” she said. “And the great thing is we don’t have to get NBS excited. They bring excitement at a level that we don’t really see with other groups. It’s such a huge honor that they trust us to do the summit again this year.”
