Four-resort pass part of long-time trend
DENVER – The fundamental story in the ski industry for the last 15 years has been how companies will compete with Vail. The new Mountain Collective pass announced last week by Aspen, Jackson Hole, Alta and Squaw Valley can be seen as a response.

Costing $349, the pass offered two free days at each of the four resorts, after which pass holders are entitled to purchase lift tickets at 50 percent discount.

Rick Kahl, editor of Ski Area Management, called it a “really smart move” on the part of the four ski area operators.
“You have these sort of iconic ski areas on the same ticket. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to ski two of the four, and if you ski three of them, you’re in fat city.”

It’s also an obvious response to the Epic Pass offered by Vail Resorts. That pass, which costs $659 for the full national benefits, allows buyers unlimited skiing at the four ski areas owned by Vail in Colorado plus Arapahoe Basin, a close ally, and the three ski areas now owned by Vail in California.

Inside the ski industry, the Epic Pass has been seen as a home run for Vail Resorts. It has allowed the company to lock in customers the summer before, evening out income – and delivering revenue even in low-snow years, such as last winter.

The idea of discounted season passes didn’t originate with Vail, however. That distinction goes to Idaho’s Bogus Basin. With a big ski area and too few skiers, the ski area saw that less could be more: lower season pass prices caused more people to buy them, and a net increase in revenue.
Colorado’s Winter Park next adopted the discount strategy, and then Vail Resorts, which only a few years prior had expanded from Vail to two other ski areas in Summit County. Since then, many ski companies have toyed with passes that offered discounts, allowed greater variety and created brand loyalties.

The Sierra Sun traced the origins of the new pass to a conversation last winter among chief executives of Squaw Valley, Aspen and Jackson Hole.
The Vail Daily talked with Will Marks, who analyzes Vail Resorts for JMP Security. He said he believes the new Mountain Collective pass will have a minor impact on sales of the Epic Pass. But he said he does believe that discounted pass products are the wave of the future within the ski industry.
David Belin, a ski industry analyst for RRC Associates, a research and consulting firm, said he believed the new pass was crafted carefully so as not to cannibalize any of the resorts’ client bases.

“They are leveraging each other’s customers to generate interest,” he told the Aspen Daily News.

Similar pass programs have also existed among smaller ski areas. For decades, the very small ski areas in Colorado have offered something called the Gems Pass, which offers discounts.

More recently, Colorado’s Monarch Mountain has assembled a friends-with-benefits package that now has expanded to 31 ski areas, including five smaller ski areas in Europe, along with nine in Colorado, five in New Mexico, and others in Arizona, Michigan, California, Wyoming and Utah. Also: Revelstoke and Red Mountain in British Columbia.

Meanwhile, British Columbia ski areas are poling dollars to increase their marketing. A campaign by the province’s 13 destination resorts has tripled in the last three years to a budget of $1.8 million next winter.

The provincial government in B.C. has sought to grow its skiing sector, which currently does about half the skier days of Colorado. Bob Barnett, publisher of Pique Newsmagazine in Whistler, points out that the provincial government has now altered its strategy, seeking to maximize use of existing resorts rather than creating new infrastructure and capacity.

Horse poop and other trail courtesies
BANFF, Alberta – Trail etiquette is on the mind of people in the Canadian Rockies. In the Rocky Mountain Outlook is a letter from a bicycle rider, who laments the lack of common courtesy. Users need to recognize that it’s a multi-use and multi-user trail, writes Cecil Lafleur of Canmore.

In Jasper, the complaint was different. Horse riders should do what dog-owners have long done on their trails, which is to stop and pick up after their waggy-tailed pals, said a self-identified newcomer, writing in the Jasper Fitzhugh.

Montana design firm makes Outside’s list
WHITEFISH, Mont. – From the stories in ski town newspapers in the West, you might think that Outside Magazine found groovy employers in each and every one of them to put on its list of good people to work for.

One of them was ZaneGray Group, located in Whitefish. It’s a design and marketing firm, and mid-day skiing or early morning singletrack rides are very much permitted, as long as the work gets done.

“We balance work with family and having a full life,” said Reed Gregerson, president of ZaneRay, in an interview with the Whitefish Pilot. “It’s nice to have Outside recognize what we’ve been doing.”

Hard-rock mining rebounds in Rockies
CREEDE – The San Juan Mountains will soon be alive with the sound of high-powered mining drills, with new or expanded mining ventures planned at Creede, Silverton and Ouray as the result of rising prices for metals. Similar plans had been in the news five to six years ago. But like the saws and hammers of construction, they were silenced by the recession.

In Creede, a company called Rio Grande Silver is seeking to further explore the potential of silver deposits that would justify a new portal. The exploration would yield an added payroll of 40 employees, reports the Alamosa Courier.

On the west side of the San Juans, permits are moving forward for a mill at Silverton and a mine near Ouray, according to The Denver Post. The mining at Ouray would put 70 people to work to extract lead, copper, zinc and silver.

All three towns have colorful boom-and-bust histories from the 19th century. Silver was discovered at Creede in 1883, and at one point the town had a population of 15,000. Poet Cy Warman wrote that “it’s day all day in the daytime, and there is no night in Creede” during those boom years.

Shoes required of all at Vail eatery
VAIL – Keep the doors closed! That will be the mandate henceforth at one of Vails’ most popular eateries, Restaurant Kelly Liken.

The Vail Daily recounts that businesses was wrapping up at about 10 p.m. on a recent hot, summer night when a big black bear wandered into the building lobby. A bartender glanced into the lobby, thinking he was seeing a large dog.

As the lingering diners were herded toward the kitchen, the bartender made loud, unfriendly noises, which caused the bear to leave. The working hypothesis was that the bruin had apparently been drawn by the smell of garbage from nearby homes in the building. Couldn’t have been the odors from Vail’s best-known restaurant, could it?

Famous people love time in Aspen
ASPEN – The Aspen Daily News recently interviewed two long-standing visitors, rock musician Joe Walsh and U.S. diplomat Madeleine Albright.
Walsh is a guitarist for the Eagles, a band that in 1971 tightened up its sound by playing a month-long stint at a now-defunct bar at the base of Aspen Mountain. That was just before the band recorded its debut album.

Since then, notes the Daily News, Aspen has evolved “from a long-hair Mecca of soft snow, hard drugs and casual sex into a playground of the 1 percent.” Despite the changes, Aspen remains the same at the core, Walsh said.

And that was also the message from Albright, the U.S. secretary of state from 1997 - 2001. Born in Czechoslovakia, her father, a diplomat, moved her family to Denver when she was a teen-ager. She began visiting Aspen in the 1950s, and has returned regularly through the years – routinely two weeks at Christmas, and two more in summer.

“Seeing her in person, its hard to believe this slight-of-stature, 75-year-old grandmother of six was once called an ‘unparalleled serpent’ by Saddam Hussein and is considered by many to be one of the roughest women in the world,” says the Daily News. “By the way, she can leg press 450 pounds.”

Breckenridge gets OK for expansion
BRECKENRIDGE – The Forest Service has approved expansion of the Breckenridge ski area. The approval gives the ski area the right to use an additional 550 acres of terrain, four-fifths of it lift-served and the remainder hike-to slopes. The terrain will need two new lifts.

The main purpose of the Peak 6 expansion is to reduce skier congestion and waiting time for lifts, said Scott Fitzwilliams, supervisor of the White River National Forest. The ski area has twice in recent years been the most visited ski area in the Untied States, surpassing long-time heavyweight Vail Mountain. In the 12 ski areas of the White River National Forest, from Aspen to Arapahoe Basin, it was also by far the most congested on the slopes.  

The expansion had been fought by backcountry skiers, who argue that the ski area was poaching their powder.

– Allen Best