Colorado ski areas square off in Sierra
TRUCKEE, Calif. – Last week’s announcement of a ski-area takeover at Lake Tahoe really can be seen as competition between two recreational empires based in metropolitan Denver-Boulder.

The owners of Squaw Valley are taking over operations of nearby Alpine Meadows. Although not directly connected, the two resorts collectively will have 6,000 acres. The two resorts are just 10 minutes apart, with just one privately owned parcel separating them. The deal had been rumored for months and talked about for years.

Squaw Valley was purchased last year by KSL Capital Partners, which is led by several former executives of Vail Resorts, among them Mike Shannon, who directed operations at Vail and Beaver Creek in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Eric Resnick, who worked at the same company, but a decade later. KSL is now based in Denver.

Vail Resorts also has a strong California presence, with ownership of Heavenly and Northstar-at-Tahoe. Several years ago it moved its corporate headquarters from the Vail area to a suburb of Boulder.

Owning multiple ski areas allows companies to leverage their assets in marketing and in season passes. Vail Resorts has various iterations of its Epic Pass, including one that costs $649 and is good at its two California resorts, its four Colorado Resorts, plus Arapahoe Basin. KSL, with its new purchase, is offering a $799 pass good at both of its California resorts.

At stake is not just the 7.5 million people in the San Francisco metropolitan area, but also the potential to peel away domestic – and perhaps international – skiers from other destination resorts, including those in Colorado, Utah and probably British Columbia.

Ralf Garrison, who has been tracking ski tourism for 30-plus years from his headquarters in Denver, used the metaphor of a magnet in an interview with the Sacramento Bee.

“Tahoe’s challenge is to build a big enough magnet,” he said. “It needs to attract guests who come farther and stay longer.”

Squaw Valley hosted the Winter Olympics in 1960, but until the last decade not all that much had changed. Colorado investors, however, have been remaking the region. And the Sacramento Bee correctly notices that it’s not just about skiing anymore. “It’s more about developing full-service resorts with shopping, restaurants, high-end lodging and other amenities.”

The paper also portrays the merger of Squaw and Alpine as enhancing Lake Tahoe’s possible bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Colorado is also considering whether to make a run at the same target.

Mountain towns enjoy strong summer
MT. CRESTED BUTTE – It was a good summer for ski towns, big and small.

Mt. Crested Butte reported a record July for sales tax collections, more than $200,000. The tally was 34 percent above an 11-year average.

Vail also had a record in July, nearly $1.5 million. It also set a record in December, $3 million.

Joe Fitzpatrick, Mt. Crested Butte’s town manager, attributed the strong uptick to a new zip line on the lower slopes of the ski area, more weddings and increased mountain biking opportunities. Plus, he said, people in Colorado traveled in Colorado.

In Vail, there were specific reasons, too. But Ralf Garrison, a long-standing expert in tourism economics, cautioned against crediting any one thing. “Some are flying above the economic storm and are not impacted, and others, who are tangled up in a depressed market, are feeling sorry for themselves, and they want to go to their happy places,” he told the Vail Daily.

However, Garrison warned against too-lofty expectations. Winter reservations look good, but “it really is an uncertain economic time,” he said.
That cautious view seems to be shared in Steamboat Springs. Deb Hinsvark, the finance director, told the Steamboat Pilot that the city assumes no economic progress during the next five years, and maybe deterioration.

Link proposed between Utah ski areas
PARK CITY, Utah – The operator of the Canyons, the ski area near Park City, says it hopes to link with the Solitude ski area, using a lift or tram for the 1-mile traverse across the crest of the Wasatch Range.

The Wasatch Range, like the Tetons in Wyoming, is steep, narrow and relatively high. On the east side are Deer Valley, Park City and The Canyons. A few miles away are Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude.

Connections among the ski areas have been talked about for years, but with no concrete steps. Talisker, owner of The Canyons, says it has no timeline for the project. It would need to get approval from the U.S. Forest Service and several other agencies.

Opposition was immediate. A group called Save our Canyon wants to keep the spine of the range reserved for the self-propelled. “(Talisker) has a long road filled with controversy and conflict,” said Carl Fisher, executive director of the group.

“There would be no backcountry,” he said. “It becomes the lift-served backcountry.”

Sun Valley faces uphill airline battle
HAILEY, Idaho – Will North America’s first destination ski resort become a destination for only the select few? That’s the fundamental issue as the Ketchum and Sun Valley community wrangles with its airport limitations.

Sun Valley’s first ski lifts were erected as a way to draw more passengers to J.J. Harriman’s Union Pacific Railroad, but those railroad tracks long ago were torn out. The airport at Hailey, 20 miles from the ski area, is too small to handle the big planes that fly into airports serving Vail, Steamboat and even Aspen.

Now, after several years of looking at the potential for a new airport outside the mountains, farther yet from Sun Valley, the Federal Aviation Administration has called a halt, because of rapidly escalating costs and incursions into sage grouse habitat.

The Idaho Mountain Express reports that public officials in Hailey are now contemplating the prospect of an expanded airport – something they had stoutly opposed. But there’s still an option of doing nothing, with the airport continuing to operate under a special waiver from the FAA.

Doing nothing means that Sun Valley and Ketchum could eventually lose commercial air service as the Q-400 becomes obsolete, and carriers move to using larger planes.

Plastic bag debate divides communities
BASALT – Mayor Rusty Duroux reported that he found 18 reusable bags in his house, and 14 were made in China, with only two of them clearly identified as being from the United States.

With that as his reason, Duroux was the lone dissenter as the Basalt council approved a 20-cent fee on both paper and plastic shopping bags.

“It’s hypocritical to discourage use of single-use bags, but ship reusable bags from overseas,” he said, according to an account in the Aspen Times.
Aspen, Basalt and Carbondale are all contemplating restrictions designed to move consumers to reusable bags. However, after taking the first action to adopt fees, some members of the City Council thought maybe an outright ban would make more sense.

Action is also being contemplated in at least two other mountain towns. In Steamboat Springs, any decision has been delayed until next year, although the Steamboat Pilot reports the issue is being debated by City Council candidates. In Hailey, Idaho, voters will decide the fate of disposable bags in

November. But there, as in Basalt, the source of reusable bags seems to have become an issue.

In Aspen, one irreverent local wag Carl Heck had this to say: “Too bad we can’t ban plastic people in Aspen along with plastic bags.”

Vail real estate experiences slowdown
VAIL – The real estate market has slowed from last year in Vail and the Eagle Valley, according to new sales figures through August.

A report from Land Title shows sales, as measured by total dollar volume, at 80 percent of last year. The firm’s Trevor Theelke says total sales for the year should still top $1 billion. But this compares with nearly $1.5 billion for Eagle County last year and $2.2 billion in 2008. But there is still some loose change at the very high end, as the $7.1 million sale of a unit in a condominium project in Vail demonstrated.

Free parking ends in Whistler
WHISTLER, B.C. – After endless grousing, Whistler has adopted fees for paid parking. Henceforth, parking will cost $2 per hour, up to $8 a day, dropping to $4 after 4 p.m.

That’s but a song in cities. Still, some in Whistler worry that this pay-to-play concept will dampen the enthusiasm of visitors from the Vancouver area, who bolstered business when international visitors stayed home for several years.

Pique Newsmagazine reports that the municipality expects to generate $1 million in revenue, less than what was originally hoped. Some of the money will go to subsidize a local bus system, and the rest toward costs of providing the parking lots.
– Allen Best