Skiing and Clinton’s Enviro Legacy
The Clinton administration’s moves to give Gore a shiny campaign asset and Clinton an environmental legacy started in October with the initiative to turn 40 million acres of national forest into roadless wilderness. NSAA’s Geraldine Hughes suggests that this and other initiatives “could result in significant changes for ski areas on private and public lands.”
Generally regarded as the architect of the moves is acting chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), George T. Frampton, consummate beltway insider, an enthusiastic skier and, for those who wonder, no relation to Vail’s super-developer of the same name. Once president of the Wilderness Society, he previously served the administration as Assistant Secretary of the Interior, with responsibility for the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Moshe Alamaro and His Urban Icebergs
To Moshe Alamaro, a researcher at M.I.T., the proposal of desalination as the answer for water shortages in the Northeast didn’t make sense: too energy-intensive, too costly, too limited by the need to be near salt water. When reservoirs were full, the municipality had to watch excess water in winter run off into the ocean. Why not capture it as ice, building huge ice piles adjacent to the reservoirs for summer meltoff?
Alamaro researched the snowmaking field, did vast amounts of math relating to heat transfer, droplet size and shape, drift, sublimation, nucleation etc. Understand, Moshe Alamaro does not think small. His math tells him that large droplet size (in the 1 mm range) as well as a long hang time in freezing temperatures. So, the nozzle height is 100 meters (328 feet). How’s that, HKD?
Alamaro posits that a New England community might require storage of a million cubic meters of water, or 265 million gallons. That amount becomes a million tons of ice, which will have been produced over 500 hours of operation with a pump and nozzle flow rate of 530,000 gallons per hour. The ice pile would be in the range of 200 feet high, 630 feet wide at the bottom and sloping up at about a 35-deg. angle to 65 feet wide at the top. The length of this prism-shaped pile would be a little over 1,000 feet. Insulation would come from a covering of two sheets of mylar with air blown between them.
There are, of course, some potential problems to be resolved: aesthetic impact, local fog generation, drift of ice particles onto highways. But there are also potential upside pluses: possible recreation use of the ice pile, as well as its use for local cooling needs, whether in brewing, cheese-making or plain cooling of buildings.
What Alamaro needs now is a commitment for developing a pilot project. He’s had nibbles. In the meantime, his exhaustive research on the fundamentals of snowmaking should generate interest in our little world.
K2 Launches Mod X Mid-Season
K-2 Skis decided on a mid-season launch for its new MOD X, a ski that is loaded with hi-tech features, including the damping system that incorporates some aerospace magic from Boeing. (Historical note: it was over 50 years ago that the first metal ski emerged with breakthrough aeronautical technology.)
This new “flagship model” is expected to be in retail stores in mid-December. At presstime it was difficult to figure what K2 intends to do with the technology and the company hasn’t explained what happens to the rest of the line when a flagship sails in.
USFS Hosts Recreation Summit
Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck called the day-long meeting October 20 to present the agency’s new Recreation Agenda and to get input from leaders of the outdoor recreation industry, meaning people like NSAA’s Michael Berry and his equivalents in mountain biking, snowmobile, hiking and others.
In his opening remarks, Chief Dombeck expressed four objectives for his agency: watershed health and restoration, sustainable management, roads and recreation. The last is the trickiest on the FS plate because it has become so big and demanding, and also because it so often conflicts with competing priorities, such as environmental constraints. In this connection, it was disappointing, but hardly surprising that not a single one of those invited to participate from such organizations as the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, Wilderness Watch etc. showed. Not one.
The Aspenization of Mad River Glen
At a fall shareholders meeting at Mad River Glen, Vt., it was decided to upgrade the historic 1948 chairlift. Not right away, mind you, but in 2001. New drive and new single chairs are called for, but it was the eventual installation of new tower crossarms with sealed-bearing sheaves that raised some dander. Hell, without grease dripping from the sheaves (hand-greased daily, by jeezle) people may start wearing fancy ski clothes. Then what happens to the Mad River culture?
Still the Greatest Snow on Earth
The U.S. Supreme Court agrees that “The Greatest Snow on Earth” should be allowed to fall on the Wasatch. The court refused to hear an appeal of a lower court’s decision that the Utah Travel Council’s slogan, used since 1962, does not damage or dilute the value of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus motto, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Perpetrator of some of the greatest ever snow jobs, P.T. Barnum, is surely smiling.
Will the Dynastar Infomercial Pay Off?
Debuting this month on a resort cable network near you is the much-touted Dynastar/Lange/Look infomercial, a go-for-broke sales strategy of Charlie Adams, Dynastar’s VP of research and development as well as of marketing. The infomercial will air on Resort Sports Network, Outdoor Life Network and several regional Fox Sports Networks.
A 10-day test in New York and Boston brought encouraging results, according to Adams, based on the volume of calls to a toll-free number for information packets and directions to the nearest retailer.
Hosted by Bob Beattie and Pam Fletcher, the show features endorsements by Picabo Street, Tommy Moe and Alberto Tomba. The upbeat theme is that skiing is safer, easier and more fun these days. Of course, that’s all because of those nice and clever people of Dynastar, Lange and Look. Who else? It’s slick and professional. It’s also very hard sell. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. (Gnarly question: the infomercial assumes the viewer knows who Beattie and Fletcher are. But if the viewer is not one of the few who watch competitive skiing on the tube, is that assumption correct?)
SIA Set to Distribute Its “Toolbox”
SIA’s David Ingemie brought in some ski press and other guests to audit a presentation to the SIA board on its new $300,000 marketing research initiative. The project, conducted by FocalPoint Marketing and ZSport, first analyzed existing research. Secondly, it conducted a segmentation study to analyze the demographics of potential downhillers and determine which segments should be targeted. The third part, which will be unrolled at Ski Magazine’s Industry Week and Transworld Snowboarding Conference in December, will present the “toolbox”–the tactics and strategies for how the ski industry at large might use the insights that have been gained.
“OK, which of us,” Tecnica’s John Stahler wryly asked, “will be the first to run a wussy ad?” His pointed question went straight to the implications of some of the suggestions: That skiing’s image is intimidating and lacks mass appeal…That we need to redefine what “good” is…That, instead of saying hucking off a cliff represents good, maybe linking three turns in a row is a great achievement…that instead of the industry’s beloved techno-jargon in sales messages about equipment, just say, “It’ll help you ski better!”…that we should go after families with kids under 16 with the right messages.
Clearly, while the findings and ideas were well received, many suppliers, especially snowboard manufacturers, just couldn’t see how they could flop their promotional image to one of happy families sliding down a big cruiser without alienating core customers. Ultimate answer: more customers is more important than the few core customers.
Short Turns
The 2002 Winter Olympics will have more events than ever before. The 1924 Games boasted 13 events; Salt Lake City will host 78. Progress?… The “big three,” Vail Resorts, American Skiing Co. and Intrawest all posted year-end results. Vail’s and ASC’s numbers were down, both in revenues and EBITDA…Intrawest, however, showed a 57 percent rise in revenues and a 51 percent increase in EBITDA.
