From the cover right on through this January issue, the theme is the decade of the 1990s. Not a very original thing to do, but publishers are sheep, just like the rest of humanity, and the start of a decade is always the signal for portentous utterances of what lies ahead. We all become instant visionaries. So be it. (By the way, congratulations to Ski Magazine on its January issue with the “Futureski” theme. It is both fun and thought-provoking.)
Talking about fun, what about our front cover, designed by Doris Tomaselli. Bright, isn’t it? Well, it might have been even brighter if we had been able to use fluorescent colors without lousing up LMC’s ad on the back cover. The idea was to capture the spirit of these ski times as exemplified by the riotous colors and designs of today’s ski clothing. “Fun” colors.
“But Janet,” I protested, “that means all those dreadful lime-green/panther-pink combinations and hot purple and fuchsia and . . . and . . .” I was spluttering by then, I with my rather classic (boring?) taste in ski clothing (basic black, please, perhaps a red sweater, and oh how I yearn for the old days when ski designers strove to compete in elegance with the classic black Head ski!).
“No,” Janet reassured me, “I realize we could go overboard in capturing the ‘fun color’ spirit. We’ll just pick up the colors from my Obermeyer ski suit. Trust me!”
I did. Was ever a publisher so betrayed?
In any case, for this issue we’ve rounded up, I think, some wise and thoughtful seers for the job of seering, and the first one we got (“Round up the usual suspects”) was Jim Branch, of Sno-engineering. He starred in this role 10 years ago in SAM. (Jim, how do you feel about the next one, a decade hence, when you have the responsibility of emceeing the start of a whole new ski industry century?)
Jim Branch is, without question, the most knowledgeable expert the industry has. He has mastered every relevant discipline, and his particular strength is that if there are some he hasn’t yet mastered, you’ll never guess it. Jim is also particularly valuable to an editor because he holds strong opinions on just about everything, and is not shy about sharing them.
Tucked into an awesome schedule of keynote speaking, panel-sitting and lecturing, Branch occasionally tends to business, and one of his most fascinating assignments has been as consultant to Dendrite, the consortium of ski areas which put money into the development of advanced snowmaking technology some eight years ago. In his article beginning on page 62, in what is almost a throw-away paragraph, Jim drops the bombshell of what Dendrite has come up with. Some are viewing the technology as analogous in potential industry impact to the introduction of the detachable quad in 1981.
Another of the “usual suspects” is Chuck Lewis. The last time we interviewed him (May 1985), it was over a snifter or two of good cognac, and Chuck reciprocated with some of the sharpest analysis the industry had seen on the subject of real estate and skiing. “When the mix makes sense,” we called the article, and a number of consultants still use reprints of it as required reading for their clients.
This time Chuck was too busy preg testing 300 cows on his ranch to sit with a brandy (“You’d be amazed at how long an arm you need!”), but Chuck’s thoughts, starting on page 66, are as incisive as ever. And as timely.
A wonderful win-win story for the Nineties is the one on developing a ski facility on recycled industrial ash (page 79). Instead of all the noxious downwind consequences of burning coal that we read about, here the coal is burned with limestone to produce an ash that is destined to have a joyous reincarnation as an ash slurry that hardens into a substance that will be piled high into a ski mountain yielding a vertical of 400 feet or more. If the process checks out, what’s to prevent a whole string of these Mt. Ashmores springing up across the country, providing a vital service to the smokestack industries, and providing skiing to countless budding Werners and Chaffees?
And there are others: on page 70, you will find Don Gogel, principal of an investment firm, who, in his words, “has developed a minor avocation of commenting on trends in the ski industry.” He is the think-tanker for the Ski Magazine Week annual industry talk-in. (See page 34 for this year’s highlights.)
We also have the ski area industry’s most important bean-counter, Dr. Marvin Kottke, who will be found peeking into the future starting on page 63. A research economist by profession, Marvin is the guy who annually takes our industry’s skier-visit pulse.
Nor are the skinny skiers forgotten. On pages 67-79, Jonathan Wiesel and Bart Deeg spell out a very dynamic future for tomorrow’s cross country centers.
On Page 75 is an old friend of mine, Andrea Mead Lawrence, who speaks to the environmental issues that are so central to her. (On the same subject, but in a more strident tone, you will find a note of impatience in our editorial on page 12.)
Years ago, at St. Moritz, St. Anton or Chamonix, I was convinced that the European ski resort was about as cosmopolitan a setting as you could find, except, perhaps, for the dining car on the Orient Express. You skied and partied with people from all over the world. Conversation was a Babel of tongues. Well, I think that’s happening here, right under our noses. Bernie Weichsel’s Ski USA program is bringing the world’s skiers to our slopes, helped by — and he’s the first to agree on this — both the weaker dollar and the dicey snow conditions suffered by European ski resorts in recent years. There’s a look at our cosmopolitan future on pages 76-77.
So, feast yourself on the future. I happen to think it’s a very bright one, notwithstanding our industry’s compulsion for doom-and-gloom scenarios. As Ski Magazine‘s senior editor, Ed Pitoniak, pointed out at Vail in December (see excerpts page 12), “Now we find ourselves amid Baby Boom Two, or, as it’s also called, the Echo Boom. This year there will be four million births in the U.S., the greatest number of births since the height of Baby Boom One in the late Fifties. All of these kids, and their parents, represent our greatest chance for growth in the Nineties.”
All of us at SAM — Cathy of advertising, Janet of editorial, Lise of circulation, Pat of art direction, Donna of just about everything, and I who empty the wastepaper baskets and clean out the office cat’s litter box — wish you all a wonderful, snowy, prosperous 1990, and the same for the whole decade we preview in these pages.
