Development
Red Lodge Mountain plans $13.3 million year-round resort
The plan calls for an expenditure of just under $13.3 million over the next ten years to make the area a year-round facility with championship golf course, condominiums and convention facilities. Money for the venture will come from a loan, probably under the auspices of the Small Business Administration.
Next year, right-of-way acquisition, enlargement of sewerage and parking facilities, slope improvement and completion of Barrier’s Run from the top of 9,416-foot Grizzly Peak are scheduled.
“Before 1980 rolls around,” Red Lodge president F. Edward Jones says, “Red Lodge Mountain will probably have been transformed from a primarily local ski operation serving Billings into a twelve-month diversified resort of national prominence.”
Aspen Skiing Corp. asks study of Haystack Mountain
The supervisor of the White River National Forest in Glenwood Springs, Colo., has recommended that the Aspen Skiing Corp. be granted permission to study the feasibility of a Haystack Mountain ski area.
The regional forester in Denver, however, has not yet acted upon the request. The local supervisor’s approval of the study is “far from tantamount to the creation of a new area,” he points out. Local approval is only one of many factors that would need to be taken into consideration before the area could be built. Appropriate state and local governmental units would have to be consulted and the opposition of groups such as Aspen’s Environmental Task Force taken into account.
The Aspen Skiing Corp. has a lease on about 300 acres of Haystack Mountain, which lies west of Aspen off Highway 82. The study would explore snowfall as well as costs and possibilities of development at the site. Groups opposing the proposed ski area point out that it is the bedding ground for the largest herd of elk in the area.
Johns-Manville eyes Idaho’s Elkhorn Valley for development
In a joint venture with Sun Valley Co., Johns-Manville Corp. has announced it will develop 1,000 acres in Elkhorn Valley, adjacent to Sun Valley, Idaho.
The development plan calls for ski areas, a golf course and other recreational facilities. The company said that condominiums and other forms of residential housing and commercial areas will be built. According to Francis H. May, Jr., executive vice president for finance and administration, development will start as soon as possible.
The company has formed a subsidiary called Johns-Manville Idaho, Inc., to handle the development. Sun Valley Co. will hold a minority interest in the new company.
Finance
Sale of Snowmass to Aspen Wildcat is halted
The sale of Snowmass-at-Aspen to Aspen Wildcat, announced last December as an agreement in principle, has been canceled and negotiations halted.
The decision, made in early June, was by mutual consent, said a joint statement issued by American Cement, parent company for Snowmass, and Aspen International Properties, parent firm for Wildcat.
Last October another previously announced sale of Snowmass fell through. At that time Kaiser-Aetna was negotiating the purchase of the ski area.
Indications are that American Cement will continue its efforts to sell its properties at Snowmass.
Promotion
Tri-State juniors launch season lift-ticket raffle
A junior racing committee serving Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island has announced a season-ticket raffle to help support its expanded junior racing program
The Tri-State Junior Alpine Competition Committee says most of the ski areas in the three states, plus several areas in New York, have agreed to give 10 season tickets for the coming season. These passes are being combined into 10 “master passes,” to be honored at any of the participating areas, and will be raffled off in mid-December.
The committee reports that it is still accepting area participants. Interested areas should write: Richard Tingle, 478 S. Main St., Thomaston, Conn. 06787.
Visitors bureau opens in Sun Valley area
The Sun Valley/Ketchum Visitors Bureau opened this summer to handle reservations for visitors and marketing and advertising campaigns for hotels, motels, condominiums and restaurants near the Idaho ski resort.
Lloyd J. Curtis has been named the secretary-manager of the bureau. Curtis has extensive experience in hotel management and marketing. Until recently he was resident manager of the Calico Resort Hotel at Sun Valley.
The visitors bureau includes 25 hotels, motels and condominiums; 20 restuarants; and 12 merchants in the Sun Valley-Ketchum area.
The bureau also plans to operate a shuttle-bus system among members during the winter months.
Area promotion tied to SCCC ticket trade
For the past four years some Eastern ski areas have worked lift ticket trade arrangements for radio and TV advertising with Robert Gold, a new York-based “barter house.” This year Gold is expanding his advertising by offering, he says, space in Time and Newsweek.
Gold, under the auspices of the Ski Council Coordinating Conference, a group comprised of ski clubs in the New York metropolitan area, is offering many of the East’s major ski areas blocks of advertising in major markets in exchange for lift tickets. The tickets Gold receives in payment will be distributed at reduced prices through affiliated clubs of the SCCC and USSA.
Advertising comes no cheaper to the areas, Gold says, although often in the case of radio and TV, lower rates are possible because of the large purchase of prime advertising time.
The offer is strictly a trade arrangement. “I never take cash.” says Gold. Neither does he accept the business of all areas. “An area must have a 1000-ft. vertical,” he says, “and at least two or three chairlifts.”
Injured skiers not forgotten at Aspen
Aspen skiers injured at any of the Aspen Skiing Corp.’s three ski areas and hospitalized overnight aren’t forgotten by the townspeople. The Aspen Country Store, which has traditionally given a free toe sock to every skier with a broken leg, now sends members of its staff to the hospital to present injured skiers with small, silver Aspen leaf pins and expressions of sympathy from D.R.C. Brown, president of the Aspen Skiing Corp.
People
Simeon Thomas, protege of French ski technique expert George Joubert and co-translator with SKI Magazine Editor-in-Chief John Fry of Joubert’s Ski the New French Way, will become new general manager and coach of the Aspen Ski Club this fall.
Thomas, 26, is assisting Joubert this summer with a racing school in France and coaching at camps at Mammouth Mountain, Calif., and Portillo, Chile.
Thomas is a native of Aspen and the only American to coach in Joubert’s summer camp in France.
Gordi Eaton will head up a new product development and research program for the K-2 Ski Co. He was head coach of the Mt. Mansfield Ski Club in Stowe, Vt., last winter. He and K-2 sales manager Chuck Ferries were men’s and women’s coaches, respectively, for the U.S. Ski Team under Bob Beattie.
Curt Burton has been named as the marketing director of the Aspen Skiing Corp. in a major reorganization of the corporation’s promotional efforts that includes the formation of a partnership with the Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp. to handle overall marketing plans for Aspen.
The partnership, which went into effect July 1, will be called Ski Associates of Aspen and will also be headed by Burton. It will handle tour packages offered to the public through airlines and travel agents in addition to promotions.
For the past two years, Burton headed Aspen Associates, Ski Associates’ predecessor. In his new post at the Aspen Skiing Corp., he will formulate and coordinate the corporation’s expanded public relations, advertising and promotion programs, which have been brought under one roof in the marketing department.
Gene McMasters, manager of the Snow Mountain Inn at Mt. Snow, Vt., for the past two seasons, has been named sales manager of Hotel and Convention Facilities at Mt. Snow. The appointment is part of a reorganization plan designed to serve the growing demand on Mt. Snow as a convention and meeting site.
P. J. Moore, Jr. has been named Jay Peak (Vt.) area manager, replacing D. M. “Mack” Matheson who died last April in Montreal.
Moore has had a lengthy association with the ski industry since he joined his father in ski-wear manufacturing in 1946. Upon his father’s retirement, Moore, as president of B. F. Moore and Company, sold his company to Profile Ski Wear to go into retail sales of ski wear. Most recently, he was manager of the Slalom Shops in Vermont.
SKI Magazine technical editor Junior Bounous has been named ski school director of Snowbird, Utah’s newest ski resort which plans to open this fall. Until his appointment to Snowbird, Bounous was ski school director at Sundance, another Utah ski resort. A skier since he was 10 years old, Bounous’ well-known mastery of the sport was made clear once again last year when he won the National Gelande Championships with highest combined points, longest jump and most graceful jump.
Glen Ellen ski area in Waitsfield, Vt., has named Jonathan Jenkins to head its ski school. Jenkins is a senior member of the Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance and comes to the post as assistant director at Mont Tremblant Lodge in Quebec.
