CANYONS AVY SUIT HOLDS MANY LESSONS

A jury in Park City took just one hour to give a unanimous defense verdict in the case of a fatal inbounds avalanche acceded in 2007. The jury found that an inbounds avalanche is one of the inherent risks of skiing—a decision that is in itself an important finding.

To recap: the skier killed in the Canyons avalanche was skiing in terrain that was open to the public, in an area where the resort had done extensive avalanche control. Before the slide occurred, the patrol had placed one bomb five feet from the avalanche crown, and another, larger charge 25 feet away. All this avalanche work, and the carefully documented training and procedures of the patrol, helped convince the jury that inbounds avalanches are an inherent risk, that the snow safety crews had acted responsibly, and that avalanches are unpredictable.

Perhaps as important, Canyons had placed a sign just below the trail’s closed sign that warned of the possibility of avalanches. And that warning played a role in the verdict as well. As defense attorney Adam Strachan told SAM, nine out of ten skiers would probably say that inbounds avalanches are not an inherent risk of skiing. It’s important for all resorts to warn guests when that danger exists, and he encourages the industry to educate guests about the risk of avalanches. On websites, on trail maps, on signage campaigns, areas should be warning about avalanches.


SNOWMAKING WITH BALLS

In most instances, evaporation is a fact of life, a part of the natural order. But for winter resorts, water can be a very valuable resource, and conserving it is a high priority. That’s why California's Mt Baldy is pouring plastic conservation balls into its main snowmaking reservoir.

The conservation balls are 4 inches in diameter and act as a floating cover to reduce water evaporation by up to 90 percent. The balls are 1/3 full of water to keep them from blowing away in 100-mph winds.

“Water reservoir evaporation costs us $120,000 a year,” Baldy president Ron Ellingson says. Baldy’s 10-million gallon reservoir, at 7,800 feet in elevation, is fed by a smaller million-gallon reservoir at 5,000 foot elevation, filled from underground wells. It costs about $10,000 a month in summer to pump water from the lower reservoir just to maintain the water volume in the upper pond. By cutting the evaporation losses, Ellingson figures the balls will pay for themselves in two to three years. They cost about 32¢ apiece.

Once installed, the conservation balls are very low maintenance. As the water level drops, the balls pile up on top of one another, then spread out again as the pond fills. In winter, they freeze in place. In addition, the balls reduce the sunlight hitting the pond, reducing algae and plant growth.

Ellingson discovered the system by chance. He overheard a saleswoman in a restaurant as she was describing how managers of a Los Angeles reservoir were installing 8 million balls to conserve drinking water. Baldy is buying 560,000 balls to cover its reservoir. The area managed to get the reservoir 1/4 covered before winter hit and closed access to it; the area will finish next spring.


HEAVENLY ADOPTS NEW ZIPLINE RULES

In August 2009, Mark Dickson was killed when a zipline return rope at Heavenly, Calif., broke, and pulled Dickson out of a chairlift. Dickson’s family sued, and Heavenly settled out of court. Terms of the settlement included publicizing safety-related changes Heavenly is making in response to the accident—steps that may well inform the operating procedures of other zipline operations.

Heavenly acknowledged that the resort operated the zipline despite warnings of excessive wind, and that it did not inspect the rope on the Flyer’s “equipment retrieval system” on a daily basis. The rope was in “an excessively worn condition” the day of the accident, the company acknowledged, and that employees did not properly document the rope’s tension.

In addition, the company agreed that it didn’t properly maintain some paperwork on employee training; didn’t maintain a relief operator (the ride was unattended because the employee who ran it from the top was trying to deal with the broken rope); and didn’t drug test the employees who were working on the Flyer and the chairlift under its then-existing policies (the suit alleged that marijuana use was “chronic” among Heavenly employees).

Pete Sonntag, vice president and COO of Heavenly, said in a statement, “For the past three years, we have been working on a redesign of the zipline and the procedures for operating it to ensure the safest possible experience for our guests.” As a result, Heavenly changed its operations to increase staffing and oversight of the ZipRider, and it redesigned the rope retrieval system. It now annually inspects the line’s component parts, shuts down the ride in high winds, and is equipping it with a wind detector. The company also approved new policies that require drug screening and testing in cases of serious or fatal injuries or “on reasonable suspicion, regardless of incident.”


INTRAWEST FILES FOR $100 MILLION IPO. . .

Intrawest Resorts Holdings Inc., filed an initial public offering in November with the New York Stock Exchange to raise up to $100 million. The aim is to: raise money “for working capital and other general corporate purposes,” which could include acquisitions.

The filing provides some revealing insights,which were highlighted by Jeff Harbaugh in his Market Watch blog. In the year ended June 30, 2013, Intrawest had total revenue of $517 million: $339 million from mountain and lodging operations, $114 million from Canadian Mountain Holidays, and $64 million from real estate management. Due to roughly $2 billion in loans, and interest payments in excess of $300 million, Intrawest posted a loss of $297 million in 2013.

Two billion in debt? Back in 2006, when Fortress Investment Group purchased Intrawest, it planned to pay off those loans through real estate development and sales. Intrawest has 1,150 acres of “core development parcels” surrounding or adjacent to its resorts, according to its IPO filing. The Great Recession crushed those plans, and left Intrawest struggling under the debt load. But through the IPO, Intrawest “partners” (i.e., Fortress and subsidiaries) will convert $1.359 billion of debt to equity, improving the balance sheet.

The restructuring, if and when it occurs, will reduce total liabilities from $2.14 billion to $756 million. That would put Intrawest on much sounder footing; a pro forma income statement for the year ended June 30, 2013, prepared as if the IPO had been done a year earlier, shows net income of $8.5 million instead of a loss of $297 million.


. . .And Shows Interest in Crested Butte?

Are Triple Peaks and the Muellers ready to sell their management contract for Crested Butte and leave town? The family acknowledged that it has been in negotiations over the contract.

Confidentiality agreements prevent parties from revealing who’s interested, but locals are abuzz about two entities: SRS Real Estate Partners (a predecessor of which lost to the Muellers in a bid to buy Crested Butte back in 2003), and Intrawest. The resort itself is owned by CNL Lifestyle Properties since 2008.


MUCH ADO ABOUT TOKING

Pot stores opened Jan. 1 near resorts across Colorado and Washington after both states legalized marijuana possession in small amounts for adults over 21, including out-of-state visitors. Will all this lead to a net gain or loss of visits? No one knows.

In some respects, it’s business as usual. It remains illegal to smoke pot in public, and on federal land, where many resorts are located.

Private use is a different matter. It’s allowed statewide, though towns have different interpretations of what constitutes “private use.” As for availability, many Colorado ski towns voted overwhelmingly in favor of the law, and most—among them Aspen, Crested Butte, and Steamboat—are permitting a limited number of pot shops to open and sell marijuana. However, the town of Mt. Crested Butte has banned public sales, the landlord in Snowmass Village is refusing space to pot shops, and the town of Vail has a one-year moratorium.

For some visitors, legalization is a hit. Travel agency Colorado Green Tours has been selling out its cannabis-themed tours to ski areas and other destinations.

Some businesses that depend on tourism fear that visitors from deeply conservative states such as Texas and Oklahoma will stay away. But a report in Mountain Town News suggests other­wise. Jim Schmidt, a Crested Butte Town Council member, said the situation is similar to worries over an anti-discrimination ordinance on sexual preference that the town passed in 1992. “People always say the tourists from Texas and Oklahoma will stop coming here. Well, they keep coming,” he said.