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« Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » May 30, 2006 What Will Happen To Homewood? Tahoe Resort "At a Crossroads" Owner Jeff Yurosek had hoped to sell the 1,086 acres to the U.S. Forest Service in a deal that would have kept the ski area open, the land protected, and put enough money in his hand to build a commercial center along Highway 89 that would remain privately held. The deal, had it gone through, was estimated to realize more than $60 million - testament to the area's desirability.
But that plan, conducted largely in secret, came to a crashing halt after a local congressman, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, submitted a one-sentence rider to an Interior Department spending bill - and instantly picqued fears the land will be carved into as many as 23 estate-sized lots for the mega-rich.
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May 29, 2006 Liability Risks and Lawyers Taming Special Events?
This taming of the game sometimes doesn't sit well with locals, those who participate most in the more "out there" kinds of special events, but it seems to play just fine in corporate offices.
"The insurance thing is just an excuse for the mountain not to do these kinds of events," John Shand, owner of Avalanche Sports in Breckenridge, Colo. told The Industry Report. "They just look at it as a waste of dollars. They might have to put a patroller over there. They don't see any monetary benefit out of it."
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Resort Owners Say: "We Want Web Cams!"
But is that what your customer wants to see on your mountain when they arrive?
Attendees at last month's Salon de l'Amenagement de la Montagne gathering in Grenoble exhibited quite a bit of interest in a high-tech - but comparatively low cost - ski-related gizmo which is turning out to be du rigeur for resort operators this year. And it's something guests want to see before they visit you.
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Southern Hemi Hopeful As New Zealand, Africa See Early Snow "It's a little unusual to have an icy blast on the mountains quite so early on, especially when we had temperatures in the early 20s last week," said The Remarkables Ski Area Manager Hamish McCrostie. "We didn't see snow like this until a month later last year, so predictions for an early winter seem to be right. The longer term forecast indicates we'll hang onto this new snow and see more pretty soon - roll on opening day on June 24th!"
McCrostie's jubilation was overshadowed only by that at Mt. Dobson, in South Canterbury, which opened over the weekend after rolling storms left 50cm of snow in the last two weeks. The first reported opening in the Southern Hemisphere this year, it is also Mt. Dobson's earliest open in nearly 30 years.
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French Question Off-Piste Ventures After Lethal Year Jean-Francois Lamour, the country's sports minister, has described the toll as "unacceptable," though exactly how the government or ski areas would act to restrict access to areas desirable to extreme skiers has not been stated. A safety campaign has been initiated in the interim.
"Many people may be good skiers or good snowboarders, but they often lack sufficient mountain knowledge," Lamour said last month. "Make a U-turn or change your route if conditions dictate, or stay on open ski runs."
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Skiers/Tour Operators Return to War-Torn Balkans
It's not just the mountains either. One news report out of Sofia (that's the capital of Bulgaria if you dreamt about skiing in geography class like I did) notes there is so much unchecked resort construction going on along Bulgaria's Black Sea beaches that the government is worried that supply already exceeds demand and is creating "dead zones" where there are no tourists. It recalls Spain's overdeveloped Costa del Sol.
The same trend in the mountains - should it arrive and it probably will - may bring the Brits and other Europeans back in big numbers. Crystal Holidays, a UK tour operator, has been touting trips to Kopaonik in Serbia this past season.
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SkiTops and National Ski Council To Meet in Utah
The fall meeting of the Ski Tour Operators Association has been scheduled for Aug. 21 through 23 in Park City, followed the next day - as it happens - by the Annual Summmit Meeting of the National Ski Council Federation in Layton, Aug. 24 through 27.
Neither organization is connected to the other in any way and the scheduling appears to have been entirely random but both are major players, of course, and interested attendees could conceivably stay for both meetings and never have to leave the area.
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May 15, 2006 Peaks & Valleys: The Best - and Worst - of 2006 From Fillmore Street ski jumping to Borino, great snowfalls to spectacular downfalls, here's a sampling of the best - and the worst - of Ski Season 2006. Peaks
"I think it's fabulous. It's kind of zany, if you ask me, in a San Francisco way. But let's face it, San Francisco is a bit wacko, and the whole world knows it."
---- Cecilie Klaumann, secretary of the Norwegian Consulate in San Francisco during Jonny Moseley's birthday ski jumping competition on Fillmore Street.
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This 'Little Boy' Just Might Hang Around for Good A new study - there's always a new study - sent TV weatherpersons into their customary tizzy last week by essentially suggesting that El Nino might stick around for a while. In fact, the Little Boy just might move in with us permanently.
Without putting too fine a point on it, most El Nino winters tend to be milder than normal over Western Canada and other parts of the northern United States. El Nino essentially disrupts the ocean atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific waters, causing consequences across the globe, and to the point, on our mountains.
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The British Are Coming - Back!
Their mission: "Take that (North American) hill, guv!"
And they came well equipped; with plenty of new gear, the support afforded by a strong national currency, and their reputation as curious, intelligent travelers with a passion for new places.
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May 12, 2006 Fire Destroys Mountaineers Lodge at Snoqualmie Pass
Firefighters said the fire was reported just after 5 a.m. by motorists driving by the landmark on I-90. Several people promptly notified the State Patrol. The building was closed and locked when the fire broke out, firefighters said.
Battalion Chief Greg Tryon of Eastside fire and rescue says the lodge was "fully involved" when firefighters arrived. He said it took 45 minutes to stretch a line the two-thousand feet to the lodge from Highway 906 but by that time the fire had essentially burned itself out.
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May 01, 2006 Desert, Temps Over 100 Degrees - Yep, Let's Build a Ski Hill Entrepreneurs in Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, are testing that maxim, creating one of the hottest - literally - ski destinations in the world in the barren sands overlooking the Arabian Sea.
Kempinski Hotels looked at the oil-rich sands of Dubai and said: "Why not?" building its third hotel in the Emirates, styling it after a Swiss chalet and then capping the whole thing off with a 25 story indoor ski resort complete with year-round snow, black diamond runs, and a cafe they've dubbed "Aspen."
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Snow Thieves Winning "Battle of the Boards" - For Now A spokesman for the Placer County Sheriff's office in North Lake Tahoe said there were between 100 and 150 reports of board and ski thefts this season, a significant number even if you discount the number of victimized skiers and boarders who did not bother filing a police report.
"That was me," said Seattle native Mark Pilfer, who found himself uttering the often repeated "I only left 'em for a minute" after he returned from lunch during an otherwise pleasant day at a Northern California mountain he will not name. "We looked around for my Volkls and the patrol was nice about it but the upshot was they were gone and there wasn't a whole lot anyone could do about it."
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Riding the Rails, Paving the Trails - The People Decide
That's the solution of the non-visionaries of Tucson, Ariz., where I live, as just one example, where voters are being asked to vote in mid-May whether to ransom their firstborn babies so they can be bonded to indebtedness forever by widening a couple hundred streets. No light rail. Only a few blocks of trolley. My vote (already mailed)? No. That means it will pass.
The mountains know better, of course. Right? Apparently not. The Vail Daily's Allen Best is reporting that a coalition of environmental groups are yelling - wisely, I suspect - that a study called "a programmatic environmental impact statement" used by the Colorado Department of Transportation to solve the notorious I-70 corridor travel headaches from Denver to Eagle (and past all those glorious mountain resorts) is flawed.
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Slopeside Slots at Seven Springs
Bender's proposed $5.4 million project will bear little resemblance to its flashy desert counterparts, he says.
"It will blend with our traditional stone-and-wood design. Our guests will not see something flashy and filled with neon. We don't want this to be like Las Vegas."
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