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Christmas week busy and lucrative for ski resorts

FRISCO, Colo. - The chatter out of ski towns over Christmas week sounded familiar. They were busy, and people were spending money.

FRISCO, Colo. - The chatter out of ski towns over Christmas week sounded familiar. They were busy, and people were spending money.

 

"I've doubled my best (sales) in all of the years we've been in business," shop owner Heather Ireland told the Summit Daily News , who has been in Frisco since 1986.

 

In Vail, with several billions in hotel and condominium construction finally completed, the town fairly sparkled with the new hum of prosperity. Meanwhile, the real estate market has been picking up. Local agents report that six properties priced at more than $4 million each sold in Eagle County during November. In one of Vail's new condominium projects, there have been 16 sales averaging $7.4 million each, the Vail Daily reported.

 

And in Utah, The Park Record reports a resurgence of eateries. "Eating out was considered discretionary spending the last two winters, but affordable restaurant meals are all the rage this season," the newspaper noted. "Several new restaurants already opened in time for ski season, and several more are planning to open during the first months of 2011," stated the paper.

 

Shrinking carbon waistline is tough

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. - Like so many towns and cities, Crested Butte and adjoining towns in 2006 set out to shrink the carbon intensity of their lifestyles and economy. The goals were lofty; the successes, so far, slim.

 

The goal of the plan - which includes the municipalities of Crested Butte, Gunnison, and Mt. Crested Butte, plus broader Gunnison County - is to reduce carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020, as compared to the 2005 baseline.

 

Western State College business professor Roger Hudson analyzed the work and concluded that it was highly unlikely the goal can be met locally - or anywhere, for that matter, without accounting gimmickry.

 

The Crested Butte News reported some thin hope. One idea examined for several years would involve installation of a hydroelectric generating plant at an existing reservoir on the flanks of the Sawatch Ridge. There is talk of solar farming, as well.

 

But individuals from local governments and non-profit agencies consulted by the newspaper seemed to agree that decarbonizing the economy quickly would take lots of front-end money plus clear federal legislation. And neither seems to be on the horizon.

 

Ski patrollers outfitted with avalanche devices

JACKSON, Wyo. - After a ski patroller was killed and others trapped inside a lodge last winter, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort began giving patrollers a device called an ABS air bag.

 

Made by Mountain Safety Systems in Whistler, B.C., it is a backpack fitted with a collapsed bag that inflates when the person wearing it pulls a toggle. The idea is that the inflation will keep an avalanche victim on the surface of the snow.

 

Citing a letter from resort officials to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in September, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reports that ski patrollers are wearing the safety devices on a large scale for the first time.

 

The ski patroller who died in late 2009 had set off explosives that initiated an avalanche fracture above him, burying him under 6 feet. He was not wearing an air bag or an Avalung breathing device. He died before colleagues could locate him using transceivers, probes, and shovels.

 

Federal regulators did not find Jackson Hole at fault, and in 36 years of recordkeeping it was unheard of for explosives to set off a hard slab avalanche.

 

Still, the incident spurred on Jackson Hole to outfit the ski patrollers and mountain guides with the air bags and also with three-antennae transceivers to assist in avalanche rescue efforts. These three-antennae beacons give rescuers a more accurate idea of a victim's location.

 

The resort also will require helmets of all employees starting next season. Another ski patroller at Jackson Hole, who died of head injuries in a fall, had not been wearing a helmet.

 

Smaller ski resorts seek magic formula

JACKSON, Wyo. - Could another small but loved ski area fall by the wayside? That's the nagging question in Jackson after owners of Snow King Resort asked community leaders to help explore financial options during coming months.

 

Snow King's owners seem to do OK with their hotel and convention center, but the ski hill has lost money for decades, said Manuel "Manny" Lopez, the resort managing partner.

 

The ski area has respectable terrain, 500 acres altogether with 1,571 feet of vertical, just six blocks from downtown Jackson. Unlimited ski passes cost $239, just $139 if purchased early. Often called the Town Hill, it's especially good for getting in a few turns during lunch.

 

Located seven miles from Jackson, the better-known Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has 4,139 vertical feet, five times as much in-bounds terrain, six times the cost and vastly more and speedier uphill conveyances.

 

While Snow King has developed some real estate, with entitlements secured for other projects, it lacks the profit centers such as food services and ski school that provide the money for destination ski area operations. Uphill transportation itself doesn't yield that much income after expenses.

 

The Community Foundation of Jackson Hole has stepped up, creating a group called Friends of Snow King. "The purpose of it is to take a look at the long-term viability of Snow King and the possibility of a governance model that would be a non-profit," explained Katharine Conover, president of the foundation, in an interview with the Jackson Hole News and Guide .

 

Mark Baron, Jackson's mayor, said the ski hill anchors the town as much as the Town Square. He suggested he wouldn't be averse to using a portion of the new lodging tax proceeds set aside for visitor services, such as buses and pathways, to help prop up the in-town ski hill.

 

Bob McLaurin, the town manager, reported that the Jackson community will be studying Bozeman, Mont., which operates the Bridger Bowl via a non-profit group that operates under the federal government's 501(c)(4) tax code. Annual membership is $25.

 

For decades the large ski areas have gotten larger and many smaller ski areas have disappeared. Non-profit ownership isn't necessarily a panacea. Colorado's Ski Cooper, owned by Leadville and Lake County, has dog-paddled for decades, barely keeping its financial snoot above water. It's a wonderful place for families, beginners, and those nostalgic for older ways of skiing. But most potential customers would have to drive by some of the nation's largest ski areas - think Breckenridge, Winter Park, and Vail - to get there.

 

In Wyoming, with its vast distances and sparse populations, many small ski areas have been barely hanging on. A web-based news agency called WyoFile recently looked at the economics of several so-called mom-and-pops, such as Sleeping Giant.

 

Located 45 minutes from Cody, on the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park, Sleeping Giant reopened in 2009 after a four-year closure. A private group led by oil and gas executive Jim Nielson of Cody spent more than $3.5 million to buy, upgrade, and expand the ski area. Ownership was then transferred to a non-profit, which receives nearly $1.6 million in donations from local state and federal sources.

 

It lost $300,000 last winter, perhaps owing to poor snow. It got only 41 inches, but should average 300. But WyoFile suggests a harder challenge: it's just an hour from Cody to Montana's Red Lodge, a much bigger ski area.

 

White Pine, in the Wind River Range near Pinedale, about an hour south of Jackson, has also struggled - despite a reputation for excellence. It was closed from the mid-1980s until 1999 - and was likely to close again this year. But a quickly formed corporation made up of locals purchased the ski area.

 

For small ski areas to succeed, sources tell WyoFile, they need a solid core of volunteers. But they also need customers. And there just aren't many in Wyoming.

 

"Our biggest problem is we don't have the people," said Lucas Todd, who works at his family owned sporting goods store in Buffalo, Wyo.

 

"For any of these places to make it, they need to find somebody with a big heart and deep pockets," he said.

 

Jackson Hole has plenty of deep pockets. Teton County annually ranks as one of the nation's wealthiest. Whether deep pockets will emerge to preserve Snow King remains to be seen. Locals began skiing on 10-foot wooden planks on the mountain in the 1920s. In 1939, a rope tow was installed, the first in Wyoming. In 1946, it got a chairlift. It now also has three chairlifts, an ice rink, and an Alpine Slide.

 

A story of ski areas in Idaho old and new

McCALL, Idaho - Even as Brundage ski area celebrates its 50 th year of operation, Tamarack - a new resort with grand ambitions in the same area of west-central Idaho - has struggled to open after a year of dormancy.

 

Brundage, a smallish ski area with about 2,000 feet of vertical, was opened in 1960. Two names familiar in the intermountain West were involved: Corey Engen and J.R. Simplot.

 

Engen, one of three skiing brothers from Utah who became prominent, was a ski instructor at a small hill in McCall at the time. Boise-based Simplot, even then well on his way to a vast fortune in potatoes, computers and other pursuits, told Engen they needed a bigger ski area - up on the big mountain above Payette Lake.

 

Brundage has operated as a day area, with no more lodging than needed by a night watchman. But it has been in an expansion mode. It added 160 acres in 2007, and in 2009 it won approval for a major housing development of up to 1,200 units. That ambition earned the resort an "F" this winter from the Ski Area Citizens' Coalition.

 

Eventually, Brundage hopes to expand sufficiently to bring the comfortable carrying capacity of the mountain from 2,700 skiers per day to 7,100 skiers per day, according to documents at the ski area's website.

 

Tamarack, meanwhile, managed to open for skiing operations by Christmas, but with a far more limited schedule than when it opened in 2004, the most significant new ski area in the United States since Beaver Creek opened in 1980-81.

 

The fate of the resort continues to be sorted out in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

 

Riding the real estate bubble at its opening in 2004, Tamarack binged on real estate sales and, to a lesser extent, building. In 2005 it hosted President George W. Bush on a mountain biking vacation. Andre Agassi planned to build a luxury hotel.

 

In 2007, reality set in as sales lagged. Co-owner Jean-Pierre Boespflug told the Associated Press that his fundamental mistake was doing too much, too fast, without assurances of sufficient cash.

 

Boespflug and his partner owe more than $350 million to creditors, the largest being Credit Suisse Group. But others have their hands out too. The AP notes that after the bankruptcy a local man sold bumpers stickers that read: "Honk if JP owes you money."

 

With continued hemorrhaging of money, the ski lifts were shut down early in 2010. Unemployment in Long County, site of the ski area, is reportedly 20 percent.

 

Since then, the case has been moving through bankruptcy court. The AP reports that Boespflug has chosen a new business group from the Boise area called Green Valley Holding as the preferred buyer.

 

Green Valley has committed $40 million to the resort. However, somebody else could come in with a higher bid. Boespflug told AP that he hopes to have the ownership transferred by mid-April.

 

The public face of Green Valley is Boise-area businessmen Matte D. Hutcheson and Larry Givens. But there is outside investment money from a so-far undisclosed source.

 

There has been much speculation over the last two years whether one of the major ski companies, such as Vail Resorts, would swoop in and pick up the pieces. Perhaps tellingly, another ski area operator - JMA Ventures, which has Red Lodge in Montana and Homewood and Alpine Meadows in the Lake Tahoe Basin - bid lower than the Boise-based consortium.

 

Very fundamentally, Tamarack suffered in its bid to become a major new destination resort by its isolation. It's 90 miles of sometimes twisting, two-lane road from Boise, site of the closest major airport. And Boise, while big enough, hardly ranks among the nation's larger metropolitan areas.

 

While the ownership of Tamarack gets sorted out, the ski area will run during holidays and otherwise during long weekends during a 15-week season. The homeowners group at Tamarack ponied up $250,000 in seed money, but with plans to limit operating costs to $1.5 million. Associated Press reports 500 seasons passes were sold.

 

Grand Lake Lodge sold for $4 million

GRAND LAKE, Colo. - After being on the market for several years, the rustic, venerable Grand Lake Lodge has been sold to a subsidiary of the Regency Hotel Management. The price was reported to be $4 million.

 

The lodge has 56 cabins, a majestic restaurant, and the atmosphere of knotty pine that characterized tourism when the lodge was originally constructed in 1920. It sits within Rocky Mountain National Park, but overlooking Grand Lake - both the town and the lake.

 

The new owners, who also manage 50 other properties under the brand names of Starwood, Regency and Best Western, said they hope to figure out ways to stretch the season, currently limited to 100 to 120 days maximum. That has been Grand Lake's quest for about as long as the town has existed. Maybe global warming will help.

 

Allen Best writes about ski-based mountain towns of the West and also about energy, transportation and water. He can be reached at www.allenbest.net .