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April 22, 2006
Avalanche Claims California Man Near Mt. Baker
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A California man became the latest in a string of skiers/boarders killed during one of the most lethal seasons in recent memory when he and two companions were caught up in an avalanche west of the Mount Baker Ski area, according to the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office.
Tuesday's accident claimed Tobias Lee, 25, of Truckee, Calif. His brother and a friend survived.
A sheriff's spokesman said the trio was skiing near the Mount Baker Ski Area when the avalanche was triggered, sweeping Lee over two rock faces and through a stand of trees.
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April 20, 2006
Ski-Rage Daddy Gets Anger Management Classes
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A 52-year-old Douglas County man who repeatedly slugged a teenage girl after she rode over his daughter's skis with her snowboard has been ordered to attend anger management classes and pay a $100 fine in connection with a Jan. 29 assault at Steamboat Springs.
Routt County Judge James H. Garrecht also ordered Randell Berg to perform 48 hours of public service and placed him on one year of supervised probation. Berg pleaded guilty last month to misdemeanor third-degree assault. As part of his plea agreement, prosecutors dismissed another count of disorderly conduct pending from the Steamboat incident. He has no other criminal history.
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April 17, 2006
Avalanche Closes Mammoth, Three Injured, Search Underway
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Ski patrollers and rescue personnel probed a debris field in search of trapped skiers at Mammoth Mountain after an avalanche rolled through the mountain's Climax area Monday.
There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or missing skiers, though three people suffered minor injuries and all mountain operations were halted as of 2:30 p.m.
"I just hope there's no one under there," Mayor Rick Wood told a local reporter. "I'm just waiting and hoping like everyone else." The area has been on an elevated avalanche watch after recent heavy snowfall and is still reeling from the April 6 loss of three veteran ski patrollers asphyxiated after they fell into a volcanic vent.
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April 14, 2006
Pirate Nudges Intrawest - "It's All About the Land."
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While mountain resort watchers scratch their heads over the latest personnel change at Intrawest, the message from the Canadian company's biggest shareholder could not be clearer: sell.
The company's stock has soared almost 75 percent over the past 12 months but an activist hedge fund aptly named Pirate Capital, which already owns 12 percent of that stock and is "snapping up shares," according to Barron's, is pressuring the company to sell itself in order to "unlock" what it considers its undervalued real estate.
New COO Alex Wasilov, a former investment manager as well as former president of Rosenbluth International (later bought by American Express) also may be part of an Asian strategy for Intrawest, say some industry execs, who requested anonymity on the grounds that they are not speaking for their own organizations.
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Spy Technology Arrives on the Mountain
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Credit Leon Theremin - a lowly technician working on a covert listening device for Soviet Intelligence back in the 40s - with developing the precursor to a gizmo we use in our commuter lanes, supermarkets, and now - on our ski slopes.
Theremin was intent on building a covert listening device, not a FastTrack card or all-mountain lift pass, but his work with Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID), paved the way for a host of new whizzbangs already in use on your mountain or surely coming to it soon.
An RFID tag is a small wafer of silicon chips and antennas capable of receiving and responding to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. They're small, lightweight, and they have been used in all manner of applications: from tracking livestock and inventory control to tracking rental skis and wayward guests.
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Monitor Your Area For Signs of "Resort Alzheimer's"
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Credit David Perry, Aspen's senior VP of marketing, with that graphically descriptive phrase.
Perry says mature resorts would do well to follow Aspen's lead and reinvent themselves before they forget what brought people to their mountains in the first place.
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Think "Value," Not "Cheap," Travel Execs Plead
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Ask mountain travel suppliers their biggest gripes and you are likely to hear annoyance at those clients "who have the mindset of 'cheap, cheap, cheap,'" as Jan Hauer, Regional Sales Manager, Travel Industry and Partnership Sales for Hertz in Denver puts it.
Consumers need to grasp that specialized tour operators or central reservations offices can get them a better combination of lodging and services than what they get with lowest-cost deals from big booking engines, she and others attending the recent Mountain Travel Symposium in Squaw Valley said repeatedly.
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April 10, 2006
How to Help Families of Mammoth Victims
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"Mammoth Mountain Ski Area has established memorial funds for the three Ski Patrollers who died on April 6. Three individual funds have been established at Union Bank of Mammoth Lakes in each person's name; The Scott McAndrews Fund, the Walter Rosenthal Fund, and the James Juarez Fund," according to Pam Murphy, Mammoth's senior VP.
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April 06, 2006
Latest Tragedy - Heroism - On Mammoth Mountain
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Friends and colleagues of three veteran Mammoth Mountain ski patrol members killed after falling into a volcanic vent known as "the Stinkhole" were left grasping for words and answers after Thursday's accident - the latest in a string of deaths that has left the area reeling.
The trio was identified Friday as: James Juarez, 35, a five-year veteran of the Mammoth Mountain ski patrol originally from Granada Hills; John "Scott" McAndrews, 37, of Bishop, and Charles Rosenthal, 58, of Sunny Slopes, Calif., a veteran of the ski patrol since 1972.
According to Rusty Gregory, chairman and CEO of Mammoth Mountain, Rosenthal went into the fissure carrying oxygen tanks for each of his friends, but wore none himself.
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Cutting Edge Online Travel: Mashups, SMS, RSS, Applets
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So you think your Web site is cool, with all those great action photos, Web cam shots, mouse-over messages and "Contact Us" reply forms.
Think again, says Philip Wolf.
Wolf, CEO of PhoCusWright, a travel and tourism research company based in Sherman, Conn., New York and Dusseldorf, says you're stuck back in Travel 1.0 if you haven't redone your Web site and introduced the latest tools. The cutting-edge online is already at Travel 2.0.
"The marketplace has reached a tipping point," Wolf tells Industry Report, "where 50% of travel is booked online. Huge price differentiations are melting away. Consumers are looking for new reasons to look here rather than there."
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April 05, 2006
Travel Agent Gripes: 4-Star Resort, 2-Star Services
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You're a trusted travel agent who has booked a ski trip for a client months in advance at a 4-star resort hotel at Keystone in the heart of the Colorado Rockies.
But upon arrival the client discovers that the free Vail Resorts shuttle service between Keystone and Breckenridge has been discontinued. It takes 2 hours to go from one to the other via public shuttle.
That's the predicament one rep for a major agency, who asked for anonymity, was faced with this winter. She calls it the "4-star resort/2-star services" syndrome.
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April 03, 2006
Bulletin from Squaw: The Eighties Are Back
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We would be remiss as a newly minted blog if we didn't provide the scoop on at least one hot party at the Mountain Travel Symposium, currently underway in Squaw Valley. Attendees are now in recovery after the "Totally '80s Theme Party," Monday's night of boogaloo and bad hairstyles hosted by Mountain Reservations, the Overstock.com company once known as Ski West.
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