A Snowmaking Challenge
by Joel Bourassa, Operations Manager, Tenney Mountain Resort, Plymouth, N.H.

As one of the industries that stands to lose the most as global warming progresses, it often appears we are taking the old “don’t just do something, sit there” approach to this formidable issue. I’m not talking about our industry solving the global warming issue, which is akin in complexity to reaching peace in the Middle East. We are already making remarkable strides in doing our little piece, from using biodiesel fuel and wind power to installing economic flush toilets. I’m talking about ensuring that we have a sufficient supply of our primary product, snow, regardless of global warming. We need a vastly improved means of making snow, and soon.

The steady and often extreme climate changes and patterns around the country have led to ski resorts from coast to coast to rely more and more on costly snowmaking to survive. As recent as the early to mid seventies, even ski resorts here in the East only relied on snowmaking as a supplemental tool.

Snowmaking technology, equipment, and operation are incredibly expensive and incredibly necessary. But it seems that it’s still only a Band-Aid approach to the big picture. While local, state, national and global governments tackle the obvious preventative measures to try to slow global warming, we just continue to purchase larger air systems, more snowguns and pumping systems.

Perhaps it is time we, as a collective industry, invested in a Challenge Grant program where we offered our technology-based universities a challenge to come up with new and more efficient snowmaking technologies. Other industries have taken this approach, why not us?

It could work something like this. NSAA establishes a Challenge Grant Committee. This committee researches and ultimately outlines a specific challenge and the basic parameters of the challenge. Collectively, NSAA ski resorts would then partially fund a research grant, with funding assistance from interested corporations (such as companies already servicing the snowmaking business, and capital venture companies with vision). The committee would then seek applications from interested universities across the country. Perhaps the top three applicants are awarded equal grants to explore and develop their specific proposals, and the most viable proposal results in a cash award for the university and/or development team.

This challenge project would take time and ample funding, but the end result would likely benefit the bottom line at the resorts—and maybe even take another bite out of the global warming monster at the same time. At the very least, it would be a tangible attempt by our industry to control its destiny.



Many Ways to Achieve Diversity
A SAM editorial

Vail’s decision to take its diversity programs in-house, and to abandon its two-year relationship with the Denver-based Alpino group, appeared to pit the two organizations against one another. We hope that’s not the case. There’s more than one way to increase diversity in mountain sports, and plenty of room for the two groups to work separately.

Vail says its move will elevate the importance of its diversity effort internally and allow the area to manage the program more efficiently. Can the area develop the necessary contacts and communication with Denver youth groups from its offices two hours away? We’ll see. In expanding the scope of its diversity plans, Vail has also committed to developing a local program to identify 100 minority youths who will receive 15 days of skiing and/or riding a year. This is based on COO Bill Jensen’s belief that to create lifelong converts (and future resort employees), people must become immersed in mountain culture. It’s an untested idea, and Jensen’s willingness to put his theory into practice shows admirable courage.

For its part, Alpino plans to work with several other Colorado areas, such as Loveland, Eldora, and Echo Mountain, to introduce ethnic youth from the Denver area to winter sports. The program aims to engender a love and appreciation of the mountains generally, as founder Roberto Moreno believes this will have the greatest impact in minority communities. Moreno has done a tremendous job over the past decade, both in working with resorts and with the minority community. Bringing more resorts into his program is a positive step.

Jensen and Moreno disagree on the role of frontline personnel in the conversion process. Moreno believes that areas should increase their frontline minority hiring immediately, so that ethnic visitors will find others like themselves at resorts. Jensen, on the other hand, believes that minorities will only join the frontline ranks in appreciable numbers after they have become converts to winter sports. That’s why he’s emphasizing the multiple-visit program for local minority youth.

Who’s right? Impossible to tell. There’s no single right or wrong way to increase ethnic participation. Perhaps Vail’s program will prove otherwise, but at the moment the industry has had too little experience with diversity to say.

What we know is that as the minority populations continue to grow, they will eventually become the majority. And that means resorts must find ways to bring these groups into our world. The more routes to success we find, the better.



Alex Cushing, A Man in Full
by Bob Roberts, Executive Director, California Ski Industry Association

Ed. note: Squaw Valley founder Alex Cushing died in August at age 92. I preferred visiting with Alex at Sea Cove. His home in Newport, R.I., occupies a solitary perch surrounded by grassy meadows and the restless Atlantic. Here you can feel the Cushing history. The family dates back to the 1630s, its fortune made from the China trade. Here his artistic father, a protégé of Whistler, summered with the family. It is to Newport where Alex and his wife Nancy would retreat at the end of each season.

The first time I visited Sea Cove, as we settled into the sofas for an afternoon of conversation, he commented, “You know Bob, I love the view from this chair. From here I can see Spain.” It was this vision, along with an outsized supply of stubbornness, artful audacity and Cushing charm, that brought the Olympics, a freeway and an economic life to Lake Tahoe. Sixteen years ago, as we were touring the almost-completed ice rink at High Camp, I foolishly asked about the economics of the project. “It’s not about the money,” Alex roared back. “Not even St. Moritz has a bath and tennis club at 8,200 feet!” In each conversation you could sense the Cushing legacy compelling Alex to dream, visualize and ultimately sculpt his mountain.

No visit with Alex was complete without stories. They were endless and fascinating. In his youth he played poker with boxer Max Schmelling and schmoozed with dancer Fred Astaire. The tales of slot machines and “my very Presbyterian partner” Laurance Rockefeller in the early days of Squaw Valley and the inspired follies leading up to the IOC vote. Alex could hold forth for hours on the quirks of the gruff Avery Brundage and the perfidy of California politicians. Nothing was lost. His grasp of the past was as entertaining as his view of the future.

Alex treasured relationships. Over the years he preferred doing business with the people he knew and trusted. Many relationships were smooth, some were rocky. His management style could be brusque. You could disagree with Alex, but in the end you ended up respecting him. His commitment, his intensity and his foresight were unwavering. John Buchman, Bill Boardman, Willie Schaeffler, Walt Disney, Hans Burkhart, Tom Richardson, Jimmy Mott, Heinrich Bull, and Jan Kunczynski all fell under the Cushing spell, and each left their marks on Squaw Valley. Over his last two decades Nancy became his muse and business partner. Together they rebuilt High Camp, installed the Funitel and continued to craft his vision for the mountain.

The man had his critics. Warriors generally do. Alex’s aloof, patrician bearing was off-putting to some. “I’m terrible with the public,” he confided to me the night he was awarded the Charlie Proctor Award. Yet, one-on-one or in small groups, his charm could be dazzling. There is a classic photo of Alex at a piano in the Sugar Bowl lodge in 1948 surrounded by a bevy of young females, a cigar clenched between his teeth, glass of beer at hand, belting out jazz standards. When he was on, he was formidable. To his adversaries, generally bureaucrats, their attorneys, and those opposed to his projects or tactics, Alex was an unyielding opponent. Yet even his harshest critics grudgingly acknowledged the man’s awesome willpower and historic achievements.

Alex Cushing’s contributions to Lake Tahoe, California, and winter sports have been well chronicled over the years. One of his early innovations, that kids skied free, received less publicity but was responsible for legions and generations of new skiers. Over time, free would morph into a minimal charge. Yet, Alex’s eye was always on building for the future. While many in the industry debated, Squaw Valley embraced snowboarding and the culture it brought with it. Shortly after his ninetieth birthday, as we wandered back from a lunch in the Village, Alex looked up at the activity on the mountain and opined, “It’s amazing, here we’ve built one of greatest mountain complexes in the world, and so many in this new generation are content to bounce up and down in four hundred feet of vertical. I’m going to start rethinking my business model.”

I will miss Alex as a friend and a mentor and for the pleasure of his company. But this is a time to celebrate his life and his legacy. Alex Cushing made our industry and California all the better with his presence.