ny times article on ski-industry

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"For Skiers, Is Bigger Always Better?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/travel/escapes/02INDY.html?8hpib

 

basically describes how some smaller resorts in the US are creating a niche for themselves. Hope their J-counterparts are taking notes..

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Can't read it!

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you have to sign in, but it's free.

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Just copy the article and paste it here in a post.

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For Skiers, Is Bigger Always Better?

By CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON

 

ANOTHER winter Saturday morning leaks into Scott Hunsaker's bedroom in Boulder, Colo., and with it, temptation. Should he ski Vail today? Copper Mountain? Breckenridge? Mr. Hunsaker, 45, the vice president of a Web-based health-care training company, corrals the family into the van and steers toward None of the Above: Eldora Mountain Resort. With its modest 680 acres and 1,500 vertical-foot drop, it is bite-size compared with the marquee resorts nearby. But the chairlifts are just 20 miles from home, the Corona Bowl has the steep tree shots that make Mr. Hunsaker's pulse leap, and a day's lift ticket is $24 less than a full-price pass at Vail.

 

The resort's emphasis on family-friendly skiing has been an especially effective draw for Mr. Hunsaker and his wife, Amy Howard. This winter the couple enrolled their 6-year-old twins in the Kid's Trek program, in which small groups of children ski with the same instructor every Saturday or Sunday for six or 12 weeks for a few hundred dollars over the price of a $229 children's season pass. "We get them up there early in the morning and then we can ski all day," Ms. Howard said.

 

Not 10 years ago, much of the ski industry was writing obituaries for the Eldoras of America. Widespread consolidation in the industry in the 1990's led to a market dominated by a handful of publicly traded behemoths, chief among them Vail Resorts, Intrawest (operator of resorts like Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia and Copper Mountain in Colorado) and American Skiing (Killington in Vermont and the Canyons in Utah). With overall participation in the sport stagnant, these companies began an arms race, using amenities like high-speed chairlifts and fancy base villages to steal skiers from one another and to lure affluent baby boomers in their prime years for buying vacation real estate. The lower-volume, independent ski areas were having trouble keeping pace.

 

Today, said Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, "there's a sense of enthusiasm and vitality at the smaller and midsize resorts around the country." The share of skier visits over the last four seasons at the nation's largest ski resorts has slipped from about 48 percent to 45 percent, while head counts at the smallest resorts have edged up, according to a study this year for the association.

 

Any renaissance among smaller ski areas — to be sure, the revival has not been universal — owes a debt to the crucible of the 1990's. Ski areas unable to match the investments by the top-tier resorts had to rediscover their strengths and find their place, the way a mom-and-pop pharmacy in Iowa might have to reinvent itself or die when a Wal-Mart comes to town. Frequently, that niche has been found in offering more affordable skiing — comfortable but not frilly — and placing renewed emphasis on children, families and even nonskiers and snowboarders. Snowboarding has been a particular blessing for smaller areas, Mr. Berry said, because a half pipe doesn't require a big mountain, yet it attracts young people who are content to work on tricks like McTwists all day.

 

The bigger-is-better strategy pursued by top-tier ski resorts in hopes of attracting skiers also may be pushing some skiers into the arms of the ski area next door. Certainly, the larger ski areas offer things their smaller cousins often do not, like abundant (or any) on-hill lodging, swank restaurants and turbocharged ski lifts. But visitors to today's heavily developed resorts also frequently encounter things they want to escape when they head to the mountains: parking problems, crowds, cellphones and an experience that feels inauthentic and manipulated, said Hal Clifford, author of "Downhill Slide" (Sierra Club Books, 2002), which was highly critical of the changes in the ski industry over the last decade.

 

"People crave authenticity," Mr. Clifford said. Many smaller areas are doing better because "they're setting themselves up as a counterpoint to what is often a not very pleasant industrial recreation experience."

 

Here are five independent ski areas that may provide a weekend alternative to some of the industry's better-known resorts.

 

MAD RIVER GLEN

Waitsfield, Vt.

www.madriverglen.com

ADULT WEEKEND LIFT TICKET $45

NEARBY COMPETITION Sugarbush, Stowe, Killington

ATTRACTION An East Coast skier in search of the un-Killington should follow the caravan of rusted, asthmatic Subarus, known by their red-and-white "Ski It if You Can" bumper stickers, to Mad River Glen. A stubborn Vermont contrariness is in this ski area's DNA: it was built on the spine of the Green Mountains in 1948 by one of Stowe's founders in reaction to Stowe's great growth. In late 1995, the owner, Betsy Pratt, let a cooperative of skiers buy the area for $2.5 million instead of selling to American Skiing, which today owns seven resorts nationwide.

 

Because of that, Mad River, which has perhaps the most challenging skiing in the East, has resisted bowdlerization. There is little grooming on Mad River's 800 acres, and almost no snow making on its 45 runs. A skier gets what nature offers: boilerplate ice one day, thigh-tickling powder the next. There are no wide, buffed boulevards here; the skein of pinched runs that spill down General Stark Mountain have been likened to mating snakes. Daredevils on the ill-named Paradise run must negotiate drops and a blue-ice waterfall. Mad River's signature experience, however, is skiing the tight birch forests between the runs.

 

"The woods skiing is unparalleled for the East Coast," said Bruce Depper, 49, a retired developer from Swampscott, Mass. who has skied all over the world but who still bought a home near Mad River with his wife four winters ago.

 

Other than permitting some much-needed upgrades since the purchase — repaired toilets, new coats of paint — Mad River's shareholders ferociously defend tradition here. Snowboarding remains prohibited. A few years ago one shareholder seriously opposed upgrading the dripping sheave assemblies on North America's last single-person chairlift, arguing that grease-spattered ski clothing contributed to the Mad River Glen vibe. (The Methuselahian chairlift, now fixed, remains in use.)

 

POWDER MOUNTAIN

Eden, Utah

www.powdermountain.com

ADULT WEEKEND LIFT TICKET $41

NEARBY COMPETITION Snowbasin, Alta, Solitude, Brighton.

ATTRACTION On one side of northern Utah's Ogden Valley lies Snowbasin, the polished ski site for the 2002 Winter Olympics, sister resort to Sun Valley, where the day lodges have gilded escutcheons and linen napkins. On the valley's other flank is its inverse, Powder Mountain, which has done a yeoman's job of serving up deep snow, sans tinsel, to northern Utahans since 1972.

 

Perhaps only in a state with such an embarrassment of world-famous slopes within an hour's drive of Salt Lake City could "Pow Mow," as the locals call this ski area started and still owned by the Cobabe family, remain so little-known. The ski area, 55 miles northeast of Salt Lake, has as much terrain — 5,500 acres — as the Wasatch Range darlings Snowbird and Alta combined. And about 500 inches of Utah's famous talcum snow fall here annually.

 

Thanks in large part to this isolation, a certain disregard for the usual etiquettes and niceties of other ski areas permeates Powder Mountain. Relatively few of the slopes are groomed. Four slow, hypothermia-inducing chairlifts, not high-speed lifts, and one T-bar serve five ridgelines, or half the terrain. Glades and unnamed powder shots abound.

 

On the other half of the terrain, going back uphill is part of the adventure. To plunder the 2,100-vertical feet of slopes on Lightning Ridge, skiers pay $7 and grab a loop of rope trailing from a slope-grooming snowcat for a haul uphill. After skiers drop into an adjacent 800 acres called Powder Country, on the ski area's backside, they are retrieved by an old school bus.

 

Pow Mow has started to lure more skiers who are frustrated with "Was Angeles" — a term sometimes used for the crowded, glitzy Wasatch resorts where scoring untracked powder can be a contact sport. "We went there once, and we've never been back to Snowbird since," said Jim Hoffman, a retired firefighter from Hawaii who skis annually in Utah with friends. A five-minute wait at the lift is a rarity at Powder Mountain, said Mr. Hoffman, who with a friend recently built a cabin next to the slopes. Lots from a fifth to a third of an acre cost about $125,000. Mr. Hoffman and friends aside, Powder Mountain has not enticed large numbers of out-of-state skiers. The ski area and surrounding property — nearly 12,000 acres — have been for sale for years.

 

MOUNT BAKER SKI AREA

Glacier, Wash.

www.mtbaker.us

ADULT WEEKEND LIFT TICKET $37

NEARBY COMPETITION Whistler-Blackcomb, British Columbia; Crystal Mountain, Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie Pass, Wash.

ATTRACTION Set midway between the famous slopes of Whistler to the north and three Seattle-area ski areas to the south that grab most of the city's crowds, Mount Baker would seem an unlikely survivor of the industry's shakeout but for one trump card: Gluttonous quantities of snow.

 

Each winter when the jet stream trains like a fire hose on the Cascade Mountains, Mount Baker receives nearly 650 inches of snow, the most in the nation. The ski area set a world record of 1,140 inches of snowfall five winters ago. Mount Baker's reputation for deep snow has built a loyal, growing following among powder fiends from the United States and Canada, particularly among snowboarders who can better surf the heaps of heavy Cascade powder. The area has averaged an increase of 10 to 12 percent in skier visits annually the last several years, said Duncan Howat, general manager at the ski area for more than 30 of its 50 years. It doesn't hurt that a midweek lift ticket costs only $30.

 

Deep snow requires a lot of gravity to pull skiers through it, and Mount Baker obliges by cramming a surprising amount of rowdy terrain into just 1,000 acres and a 1,500-vertical foot drop. Across the ski area's trail map yellow bands stretch like caution tape, warning of cliff bands — but not making them off limits. The boundary gates that lead into the untouched lines of the Shuksan Arm and other backcountry areas are also open, provided skiers possess the requisite avalanche knowledge and gear. "They don't kill you on the rules," said Dean Collins, a 40-year-old heavy equipment operator and sometime ski model who founded Mount Baker's Air Bears freestyle club.

 

The terrain and snowfall are less kind to new skiers. The mountain offers just a half-dozen green (beginner) runs. With snowfall almost daily, grooming is a challenge.

 

The throwback feel at Mount Baker, which has no high-speed lifts and is owned by about 250 stockholders from the region, isn't likely to evaporate anytime soon: the ski area is just north of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and is surrounded on three sides by federally designated wilderness.

 

The area's growing popularity, however, has started to spur the real estate market in the hamlet of Glacier, 21 miles away, as skiers from Seattle, 140 miles away, and even out-of-staters realize they can buy a three-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot cabin for less than $120,000, said Tim Lloyd, a real estate agent in Glacier.

 

ELDORA MOUNTAIN RESORT

Nederland, Colo.

www.eldora.com

ADULT WEEKEND LIFT TICKET $49

NEARBY COMPETITION Copper Mountain, Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail

ATTRACTION Fifteen years ago, Eldora, Boulder's local ski hill, was in trouble. The modest, 680-acre ski area on the east side of the Continental Divide is a Lilliputian at the foot of giants whose names are synonymous with great Rocky Mountain skiing, and Eldora's attendance was anemic. Today, Eldora hasn't only survived the convulsions in the ski industry, it has flourished: annual skier visits have climbed 98 percent in the last decade, to 287,000 last winter, according to Colorado Ski Country USA, a group that markets the state's resorts.

 

Eldora, privately owned, is the closest ski area to Denver and Boulder, and going there doesn't require driving on the very congested corridor that links Denver to the resort-rich Summit County. "We've shifted a little bit toward the family market, in the thinking that it really is going to be the family of four that is going to default to Eldora quicker than maybe the young 27-year-old who might be willing to get up at 5 in the morning and brave Interstate 70 to get some freshies," said Rob Linde, Eldora's marketing director and a former marketing director for the National Ski Areas Association.

 

As a so-called feeder resort, Eldora is a tasting menu of ski terrain, which can keep different kinds of skiers entertained — to a point. Eight chairlifts and four surface lifts serve terrain that naturally separates skiers by ability. Fumbling novices tumble down Little Hawk Peak, while experts dodge through the tilted, mogul-filled glades of Corona Bowl, two peaks over. "The lines are a little bit shorter," Mr. Hunsaker, the Boulder executive, said of the runs, which have at most a vertical drop of just 1,500 feet, "but you can definitely find a little bit of everything."

 

Rather than denying its limitations, Eldora has acknowledged them. Today, season's pass holders can spend another $99 and get five days of lift tickets to Steamboat, the more challenging destination a few hours away.

 

SILVERTON MOUNTAIN

Silverton, Colo.

www.silvertonmountain.com

ADULT WEEKEND LIFT TICKET $99-$119, (with guide, reservations required)

NEARBY COMPETITION Durango Mountain and Telluride

ATTRACTION In 1997, Aaron Brill was a snowboarder on the lam. High pretense, higher rents and the daily jockeying for limited powder had chased him from four ski resorts in four years. Mr. Brill wondered why not just recreate the "club fields" that he had skied in New Zealand — unstarched, steep-and-cheap ski areas where an outhouse counts as an amenity and where serious skiers never cross tips with cellphone toters in Bogner ski suits? Three winters ago, Mr. Brill's 1,600-acre Silverton Mountain opened six miles outside of a down-and-out former mining town called Silverton (population 450) in southwest Colorado, as the state's first new ski area in 20 years.

 

While the previous newcomer, Beaver Creek, is a paragon of the millennial American ski resort, Mr. Brill's creation is rare in North America: a marriage of lift access and unsullied backcountry skiing. A sole chairlift ascends to a 12,247-foot ridgeline in the San Juan Mountains. Once there, skiers find a cyclorama of snagggletoothed peaks, plenty of powder and little else. No cut runs. No grooming. No easy way down the powder-filled chutes and claustrophobic glades that plummet 2,000 feet to the old Sunnyside Mine. Hiking above the lift opens up still more terrain, like Ropadeedope, a fall-line sluice that cascades 2,800 feet to an access road, where a shuttle bus returns skiers to the base area. The only other facilities are a 1,200-square-foot tent with no running water but flowing beer, a wood-burning stove and rental counter. After experiencing the place, Skiing magazine this fall rated the area, a pocket-size version of Chamonix in France, as the best in North America for both steep skiing and powder snow.

 

The San Juans harbor some of the most dangerous avalanche conditions in the nation, so the Bureau of Land Management, which issues the operating permit for Silverton Mountain, has limited the number of skiers to just 80 a day this winter while it completes an impact study.

 

All skiers must be guided by professionals (hence the price) and carry avalanche rescue gear, including beacons that can be rented through the resort. But Mr. Brill and his wife, Jen Ader, haven't abandoned the original dream to bring cheap powder to the people by charging $35 for a day's lift ticket and allow unguided skiing to larger numbers of avalanche-savvy skiers. A decision by the Bureau of Land Management to allow that is expected later this winter.