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From 'product' to 'neighbourhood' - Creating a mountain experience for 21st century customers

"The growth economy is failing. In other words, the quantitative expansion of the economic subsystem increases environmental and social costs faster than production benefits, making us poorer not richer..." - Steady-State Economist Herman E.

"The growth economy is failing. In other words, the quantitative expansion of the economic subsystem increases environmental and social costs faster than production benefits, making us poorer not richer..."

- Steady-State Economist Herman E. Daly

 

Stop for a moment. Read the above quote again. Only this time replace "economic subsystem" with "modern mountain resort." Does it make more sense now? To quote ol' Bobby Zimmerman, "these times they are a changing.'"

For 50 years, the ski business was all about surfing the economic breaker created by the baby boomer wave. Growth was everything. More was always better. More vertical, more lifts, more snowmaking, more grooming, more infrastructure, more management, more customers, more profit. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that way. As long as you didn't look back, the future looked amazingly bright.

It stood to reason though. For that particular half-century saw North America's ballooning middle class benefit from more free time and more disposable income than ever before (or since). And the numbers were indeed seductive - given the profligate birth rate of these post-war years, there were now millions of economically enfranchised families looking to recreate on a cold winter day. So why not take advantage of this phenomenon? Why not sell skiing to the masses?

Besides, the snow was free, wasn't it? And the hills - well, skiing was a heck of a lot better for the environment than logging or mining...

That way of thinking became so dominant in the industry that the young mountain professionals of the day accepted it without really questioning its premises. By the mid 1980s, it was gospel. In a Field of Dreams re-enactment, cutting-edge ski resort developers convinced themselves (and their investors) that as long as they could make on-mountain operations easy and accessible and modern and safe - read more urban - then the customers would be happy to just keep paying and paying and paying and paying...

Alas, nobody had bothered to take the sport's x-factor into account.

I know. I know. Tacky term. But I don't know what other word to use. Feel free to substitute "soul" or "heart" or "spirit" or "magic" or "history" or "culture" if it makes you feel better. After all, each of these words touches on some aspect of the non-rational elements of the snowsliding phenomenon.

Still following? What I'm talking about here is what I experienced at Whistler on Opening Day last week. Those who were on the mountain recognized it immediately. It was almost like a wink and a nod. This day, their face-splitting smiles were telling me, is what sliding on snow is all about.

It wasn't about the lifts (there were only three in operation), it wasn't about the grooming (there wasn't any where most people skied) and it certainly wasn't about fancy infrastructure (remember, this is the "backpack and sandwiches" crowd). But people were definitely happy.

So what the heck was making them smile so much? According to the still-dominant "more-is-better" ideology, they should have been bitching and moaning about the minimal services being offered at WB that day. But it was almost like the opposite effect had been achieved.

And that's what those great resort visionaries of the 1980s totally missed. When all is said and done, sliding down the mountain on snow has very little to do with creature comforts or fancy technology or leading-edge lift design. In fact, more often than not, getting bombarded by all this stuff results in a detrimental snowsliding experience.

It's all about the KISS principle. You want happy customers? Keep it simple, stupid!

Unfortunately, some of us are just beginning to realize that now. Know what I mean? On one of my hour-long walks to the Peak that first day, I took the time to stand back and appreciate my companions. Strung out in a long line of patient boot-packers - at least 50 or 60 strong - was a diverse crew of snow sliders of all ages. There were skiers and snowboarders, former racers and bumpers and longtime park rats, carpenters, doctors, students, dishwashers even the odd realtor or two. Some were chatting, some were panting, some were singing, some were lost in their own universe of pleasure and pain. But they were all hiking up the mountain together. It was like a big neighbourhood.

Get it? One would think that in an era when gondolas are being used to ferry clients from restaurant to restaurant that we would have finally convinced skiers and riders of the folly of hiking up the mountain for their turns. But the contrary seems to be happening here too. People are actually enjoying the act of walking. Go figure...

Know what the fastest-growing segment of the ski merchandising business is? You guessed it: self-propelled skiing. Whether buying touring skis or mountaineering boots - backcountry packs or probes or shovels or transceivers - an ever-mounting number of consumers is looking for something a little wilder (dare I say more adventurous) than what our big-talking skipreneurs created for us over the last 20 years.

Meaning? There is a growing realization amongst the mountain resort cognoscenti that the industry's capital-heavy infrastructure is failing to connect with the post baby boomers. Whether Gen X, Y or Z, whether Echo Boomer or Millennial, those following the Me Generation simply aren't buying the vision being foisted on them by their elders.

Argue all you want - call me a naïve emotionalist, a retro romantic, a mountain Luddite even - but the stats are amply clear on this. The business is in crisis right now. And everybody is talking about it. In a recent Powder Magazine article called The Death of McSkiing, economist Jonathan Schecter attacked the issue head-on. The only route to survival, he argued, was for resorts to recognize "what is distinctive about your community and doing everything you can to embrace and nurture and sustain it for future generations." For Schecter resort sustainability means creating "a truly authentic experience that can't be duplicated anywhere else."

Sound familiar? On reading that particular quote, I couldn't help but reflect again on my recent walks to the Peak. And it suddenly hit me - my experience there was about as authentic an experience as you can get at Whistler. Think about it. Whether 1966 or 2009, that long cold hike to the mountain's summit is something that everyone who's done it can relate to. Sure there's more "stuff" around today - and it doesn't have the same cachet that it once had - but I'll bet a revenant from the '60s would feel right at home in his old alpine neighbourhood. I can even see him sharing an al fresco meal on the side of the hill with his modern counterparts...

So what the heck happened? Why do so many of us (baby boomers as well as millenials) feel so disconnected from the modern resort "product?" Simple - because it just doesn't feel familiar anymore.

"Unfortunately, we shrank the mountains," admits Ecosign's Paul Mathews. One of the most enthusiastic proponents (some would call him a pioneer) of the "urbanize and they will come" movement, Mathews built his company's reputation on the back of his initial design successes in the Whistler Valley. Indeed, it was his hand that guided much of the look of that quintessentially '80s product, Blackcomb Mountain. Along with old buddy Hugh Smythe, Mathews and Ecosign became synonymous with the new high-tech/hi-touch approach to resort development the two friends espoused so aggressively.

But it's not like they were the lone proponents of this philosophy. From Colorado to Vermont others were jumping just as quickly on the techno-urban bandwagon. Let's just say the two friends rode that particular float better - and longer - than most.

Some might argue they rode it a little too long. But I'm getting sidetracked again.

"At first it worked," argues Mathews. "With the help of all the new technology - better grooming, better snowmaking, better ski designs - we definitely extended the participation curve for skiers and riders. And significantly so in the U.S." He stops. Sighs. "But now we're faced with completely different challenges..."

Like how do you remain "authentic" when every North American resort starts looking increasingly like its neighbour? How do you bring that titillating sense of youthful adventure back to a business increasingly considered in its twilight years? And finally, how do you re-introduce those simple pleasures that sliding on snow once delivered?

"Somewhere along the way we lost our sex appeal," says Mathews. "We also stopped listening and missed out on the cultural switch that happened amongst our kids' generation." Another stoppage in play. He chuckles sadly.  "And that's going to cost us."

That said, technology still holds a powerful grip on Mathews's imagination. So I'm not all that surprised when he unveils what he considers to be the next big trend for in the business. "There's a huge thirst out there for resort interconnects," he says. And laughs. "I mean, that's one way to make the mountains big again." Interconnects? A current Ecosign project in Utah, he explains, has his team designing a set of "connector" lifts that would link together a handful of Wasatch resorts. He loses me, however, when he starts raving about running a gondola from Alta's legendary backcountry terrain in Grizzly Gulch straight to the summit of nearby Solitude. As someone who has enjoyed that stunning high-mountain ski tour (sans gondola) I consider his proposal to be a desecration of near-sacred Snoweater terrain.

But then I'm not the guy who signs his consultant's cheques...

Still, the fact that Mathews is ready to acknowledge that his capital-intensive approach to resort design resulted in unexpected consequences is a step in the right direction. Now if I could only get him on a pair of touring skis...