Matt Hansen is the global editor for Powder Magazine. A Salt Lake City, Utah native who found his calling in the Northern Rockies, he believes in deep snow, liftie rock, and free parking.
Straddling the Continental Divide at 10,300 feet in southern Colorado, Wolf Creek Ski Area is as out of the way as it gets. Five hours from Denver by car, four from Albuquerque, and atop a mountain pass that often closes due to storms that drop 500 inches of snow annually, Wolf Creek’s isolation defines its character.
When you finally arrive at the 70-year-old resort, the view is not exactly overwhelming. Behind a few small day lodges and a ticket office, five lifts stretch up the mountain. There are no frightening steeps, no crazy faces. The vertical, at 1,600 feet, is respectable but not astounding. There are no hotels, condos or real estate offices.
Yet even in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, on a late March weekend, Wolf Creek’s dirt parking lot is nearly full. Many of the vehicles sport license plates from Arkansas, Texas and New Mexico. The skiers spilling out of them carry rental gear and pay $52 for a lift ticket and maybe a 10-spot for a burger-and-beer combo. Here and there, scruffy locals make their way up to the lifts in pursuit of lines off the backside boundary.
As usual, Wolf Creek CEO Davey Pitcher, in his dirty Carhartts, work boots and faded Capilene, is roaming the grounds, making sure operations are running smoothly. He calls into his radio to order a trash pickup in the parking lot while greeting customers at the ticket window. After everything is buttoned up, he takes me out for a quick backcountry lap. We drive a few minutes up the highway and start climbing a frozen skin track. With one ear to his staff radio, which crackles and pops every few minutes, Davey makes long easy strides up the mountain.
With Pitcher at the helm, Wolf Creek has become an anomaly to ski industry trends. Over the last several years, he successfully fought off a highly contentious, not to mention corrupt, luxury mountain development championed by Clear Channel cofounder, Red McCombs. Believing the 10,000-person “village” would forever tarnish Wolf Creek’s downhome character, Pitcher defended his ski area with the ferocity of a grizzly bear.
Pitcher’s philosophy that high-end development would actually harm Wolf Creek’s future flies in the face of conventional wisdom perpetrated by resort planners over the last 15 years. In that time, ski areas aggressively pursued slopeside projects in order to attract well-heeled customers who were more interested in spas than vertical feet. It was believed that chairlifts and snowfall weren’t good enough; you had to have luxury hotels, timeshare condos and fine dining to break through to the black. Shopping and ski valets and year-round real estate opportunities were vital to survive.
But as the 2008-09 season played out—and world financial markets crashed—the ski industry’s New Deal began to look like a bad deal. From Whistler, British Columbia, to Stowe, Vermont, to Mammoth, California, and Vail, Colorado, ritzy ski resorts were getting pinched. The destination traveler who had been tapped as the economic catalyst for high-end mountain communities cut back his ski vacations. Bookings and real estate sales fell through the floor. Things got so desperate that Tamarack Resort—a public-private real estate-based venture in western Idaho—filed for bankruptcy, then pulled the plug on all operations. Intrawest, the corporate developer of Whistler, Mammoth, Squaw Valley, Steamboat Springs, and many others, refinanced a $1.7 billion loan at the 11th hour to avoid bankruptcy.
As we skin up a windy ridgeline, Pitcher tells me he’s concerned about how ski areas have de-emphasized the skiing experience and how the industry’s real estate boom has become its Achilles’ heel. He pauses for a breath and surveys the surrounding landscape. The vast San Juans reach out in every direction. We’re up so high we can look straight across at the tallest peaks. “I wonder,” he says, the wind blowing his salt and pepper hair back across his tan forehead, “if we will start seeing ghost town ski areas.”
The Vail Model
Driving into Vail Village is a lot like driving into the mall. You enter a multi-level parking garage, pull your electronic ticket from the kiosk, and drive around and around until you find a space. The rate for parking all day is $25. Gearing up in the near darkness, amidst the rumble of air vents and SUVs jockeying for position, it’s easy to forget your goggles or sunscreen.
From there, it’s a short walk through the village to the highspeed Vista Bahn quad, where, if you don’t already have a discounted pass, you buy a day lift ticket for $97. Restaurants, ski shops, hotels, art galleries, and fur-coat racks beckon. With its pedestrian-only pathways and intimate setting, it’s no wonder that this village has served as a model of integrated amenities for the rest of the ski industry. But unlike the many mountain villages that have sprung up in the last decade, Vail’s has history. Its famous clock tower was erected just a few years after the resort was founded in 1962. Being only 100 miles from Denver—half the distance of its rival Aspen—Vail boomed in popularity, attracting the likes of President Gerald Ford to buy vacation homes there. By the early ’80s, Vail was pulling in $43.7 million in annual revenue, with real estate making up $12 million. Under current owner Vail Resorts—a multi-resort conglomerate also consisting of Keystone, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek and Heavenly—the company’s portfolio entails mountain operations, lodging and real estate that generated $1.15 billion of revenue in 2008.
“We consider ourselves first and foremost in the business of selling people vacations, and having people come to the mountains to ski,” says Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz. “We do see real estate and lodging as an integrated part of our business, because where people spend their time after they ski is as big a part of how they view their experience as their time on the mountain. We could do an amazing job on the mountain, but if our lodging was not up to the same level, there would be a disconnect there.”
Hoping to get in on the tide of wealth rising in the Rockies, other resorts followed suit, shifting emphasis from the mountain to the base area. Two years ago, Revelstoke Mountain Resort opened to fanfare by turning a two-chairlift hill into a mega resort, now offering 5,600 vertical feet and private homes with helicopter pads. Moonlight Basin, Montana, fashioned a ski area around high-end real estate, listing homes and lots priced in the millions. Behind its owner, insurance giant AIG, Stowe, Vermont, launched an ambitious $400 million luxury residential and hotel development called Spruce Creek.
But midway through the ski season, real estate investments started to take a serious beating. AIG went belly-up as the subprime mortgage market crashed, leaving Stowe scrambling to finish Spruce Creek’s timeshare condos, fending off buyers who wanted their deposits back and, after the bailout, ultimately owned by the U.S. government. Moonlight Basin was forced into foreclosure, which, along with the bankruptcy of the Yellowstone Club, cast doubt on the sustainability of the entire Big Sky area. Vail, too, is having a challenging year. Just days before my arrival, Vail Resorts announces a company-wide wage reduction (2.5 percent for seasonal staff, 10 percent for execs). Katz says he will forgo his salary for a full year, reported to be around $830,000, and take a 15-percent reduction after that. By the end of the season, Vail Resorts’ mountain and lodging components will be down by $37 million—or 20 percent. Net income will be down by nearly 30 percent, a shortfall of $25.7 million. Skier visits, off by only five percent, fair much better due to the single area where Vail saw an increase: season pass sales.
With its Epic Pass—offering unlimited skiing at six resorts for just $579 (in ’08-09)—Vail saw season pass sales jump by 12 percent in units sold. Ancillary spending, however, was off by roughly 20 percent, meaning that skiers cut back on activities like ski school, dining, and shopping. Several major projects are still under construction at Vail—including the Ritz-Carlton Residences and a Four Seasons Resort—and it would appear that, without a quick rebound, the same challenges will continue beyond this season. Given the current conditions, it’s not surprising that Vail’s focus will be on skiers more than ever—and the same is happening around the country as resorts try to retain the visitors they do have by offering cheaper passes. After years of playing second fiddle, real skiers are of utmost importance again.
“What I can say about Vail is that no matter what happens in our real estate, it will not affect what
happens on the mountain,” says Katz. “That is our commitment.”
Despite all the bad news, the lift lines at Vail are busy with skiers of every stripe. Within 15 minutes of parking, I’m spinning laps on Northwoods Express. It’s snowing heavily and the knee-deep powder is light and almost bottomless. During a lift ride, I meet a young couple from Chicago. They wear helmets and demo skis and a grin from ear to ear. They are staying with a family friend and the guy carries a Dakine pack with their lunch. They aren’t the big spenders Katz is waiting for, but they are skiers nonetheless. They’re going back to the city in a few days, and the guy expresses the dream of someday giving it all up to be a ski bum. “I don’t get enough powder days like this,” he says.
The next run I drop off a back bowl and find a thigh-deep stash. The lift line at the bottom is 30 minutes long. Even though after skiing I’ll share an elevator with a man and woman clad in expensive fur coats, it’s nice to know there’s something else bringing skiers to the hill. Like the couple from Chicago, some folks still come for the powder—and somehow in 2009 that is a heartening revelation.
Pained by Growth
Unlike the lift lines at Vail, mazes at Steamboat are empty when I roll into town the next day. Instead, I’m greeted by a massive construction site, courtesy of third-party developers hoping to capitalize on Steamboat’s casual atmosphere and deep snow. All winter long, locals have complained about ongoing improvements at the base area turning their iconic resort into someplace caught in the middle. I wanted to see it for myself, knowing that new construction has not only shaped the character of our ski towns over the last decade, but restructured their economies as well.
Several cranes tower into the sky as I pull in, the hallmark of the modern American ski town. At the lower skier parking lot, the 184,000-square foot Trailhead Lodge is taking shape, where 86 residential suites will be linked to the base area via a gondola. (The lodge is just one segment of a 47-acre high-end development called Wildhorse Meadows.) When developers pitched the idea, the gondola was eyed as a selling point for the suites, as well as a cool alternative to taking the often-cramped skier shuttle. Intrawest, which purchased Steamboat in 2006 for $265 million, had originally agreed to share the cost of installing a high-speed gondy as a community amenity. But after getting pummeled by the economy, Intrawest backed out of the deal. The gondola will still be built, but at a smaller and slower capacity.
Ski Time Square and Thunderhead, occupying the resort’s historic nightlife hub, is getting a complete makeover as developers—backed by a company from Washington D.C.—prepare to erect more than one million square feet of new buildings, much of which will be high-end. So far, all the old structures have been torn down except the Tugboat, a classic ski bum watering hole that was built in 1972. For more than a year, developers have held the bar at a month-to-month lease, and haven’t given the bar’s owners any indication of when they might move forward, or what will happen after they do. (Plans for Ski Time Square were eventually reviewed by the city in September; Thunderhead got final approval earlier in the summer.)
“It’s horrible,” says Tugboat co-owner Larry Lamb, who has been with the bar since its inception. “As far as trying to schedule entertainment, bookings, and advertising, it makes it extremely tough to do business. But we don’t want to give in.”
Though Lamb appreciates the need to update old buildings, he says the timing couldn’t have been worse. “It really seemed to hit at the wrong time with the economy going down and the developers not having the resources to rebuild as soon as possible,” he says. “Now it looks like the base area might be stagnant for a few years, so it’s depressing.”
Meanwhile, higher up from the base area, a large crane looms over the half-built but reportedly on-schedule Edgemont, a “fully amenitized community” offering slopeside residences for up to $3.2 million. A year into construction, only half of the 41 residences are sold. Build-out of the second phase has been put on hold to counter the slump.
Luckily the weather gods pay no mind. A storm is raging on 10,568-foot Mount Werner. I step from an empty gondola car to an empty quad to full-on face shots in no time. The tree skiing off Sundown Express, accessing 1,500 vertical feet of old-growth aspen and pine, is nothing short of sublime. It’s my best powder day of the year—fast, deep turns through perfectly spaced trees, the snow billowing up to my chest in places—and I’m sharing it with hardly anyone else. “Don’t tell anyone,” says a skier whose beard is caked with snow. Before I can get his name, he vanishes into a glade called “Shadows.”
A New Beginning
Unless you’re driving along a river or mountain pass, the roads in Montana don’t take too many sharp curves. It’s similar to what you might see in other mountain states—only stretched out across hundreds of miles. It’s all a bit farther away and harder to get to. It was precisely this rugged Montana romanticism that brought the Yellowstone Club into fruition. With its billionaire clientele building extravagant homes they live in just a few weeks out of the year, the Yellowstone Club set a new standard for opulence when it became the world’s first and only private ski community in 1999. And with its bankruptcy last year—after lavish spending by its former owners and alleged loan fraud by its creditor—the Yellowstone Club now represents a fitting end to the excess and greed of the last decade. This summer, the club sold at auction to one of its members for $115 million, even though just last year its estimated value was $400 million.
Undoubtedly, the future is in question at the Yellowstone Club, as well as at nearby Moonlight Basin. The latter was forced into foreclosure this summer after its failed lender, Lehman Brothers, crippled its ability to pay off its loans. general manager Greg Pack.) Stuck in the middle is Big Sky Resort, which shares Lone Peak with both resorts and is hurting after a steep decline in guests. “It won’t have a big impact on how we do business,” says Big Sky public relations manager Dax Scheiffer. “But it’s bad to have neighbors in tough times, because we count on them for a certain level of community and partnership.”
Meanwhile, about 60 miles away is another Montana ski area whose model is built around skiing, and its future is undoubtedly not in question. Marking the road to a new beginning, Bridger Bowl is having one of its best winters ever. Season pass sales and overall lift ticket revenue saw record growth, though overall visitation was off slightly from all-time highs the year before. The resort owns no slopeside lodging, and only spends money it already has in the bank, meaning it operates debt free. This same model has proven successful elsewhere at small to mid-sized resorts such as Mount Baker in Washington, Monarch Mountain in Colorado, and skier-owned Mad River Glen in Vermont. Without relying on real estate or other high-dollar investments, these areas are sustained primarily by the regional skier.
Part of Bridger’s success is luck: Bozeman is a vibrant college town; the mountain is full of interesting terrain; and snowfall reaches 350 inches per year. The other element, however, is no accident: Lift tickets are $45; you can brown bag it; and, like Wolf Creek 900 miles to the south, there is a noticeable lack of modern amenities. A parking lot, a few day lodges and bars, and the mountain are good enough to attract beginners in Polaris jackets, diehard ski bums, and, increasingly as of late, the city slickers looking for a deal.
“It’s a simple and focused model that has proved to be a good thing, especially now,” says Bridger marketing director Doug Wales. “We’ve done well in the good times, and we’ll still be doing well in the tougher times.”
Jonathan Schechter, an economist from Jackson Hole who has studied sustainability in mountain towns for more than 25 years, believes the future will be kindest to those places that recognize and sustain their true character. As every other resort starts to look and feel the same, he says, ski areas that offer a tangible difference will be successful.
“The opportunity is in recognizing what is distinctive about your community and doing everything you can to embrace and nurture and sustain it for future generations,” Schechter says. “To me, this is the next phase of sustainability…the next great wave of the economy is by selling a truly authentic experience that can’t be duplicated anywhere else.”
Which is exactly the point of Bridger Bowl’s first new lift-served terrain expansion in 30 years. The Schlasman’s Chair, an old fixed-grip double purchased from Snowbird, requires all passengers to wear an avalanche transceiver. There are no cat tracks at the top, no groomers to the bottom. It is meant for passionate skiers—the kind who will ski no matter what hotels or restaurants frame the base area.
At the summit, I follow a few locals south to the Bitter End, a knife-like ridgeline that leads up to a backcountry gate. Clicking out of our skis, we shoulder them up past avie warning signs to a steep slope of scree and ice. The objective is Saddle Peak, an ominous pyramid-shaped mountain that hangs over itself like a stocking cap about to fall off Santa’s head.
As I hike along the ridgeline, with the wind ripping at my jacket and tugging my skis, I stop thinking about money, or the economy, or who’s doing what and when. It’s true that in order to ski, you gotta have some bread—which unfortunately attracted some greedy investors over the last 15 years. But for most skiers, that concept ends as soon as they click into their bindings. As the most trying winter in memory shows, skiers ski because going downhill on snow makes them feel good. It took a recession to help the rest of the resort industry find that same perspective, but to the men and women and boys and girls who identify themselves by mountains and snow, it couldn’t have come any sooner. They got their sport back. And as long as the focus continues to be on skiing, they should be fine for many years to come.
This article was originally published in Powder Magazine, December 2009, Volume 38, Number 4.
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