Criminal Charges in Skiing Death?
On April 10, the Colorado Supreme Court moved into uncharted waters when it ruled on a 1997 case in which Alan Cobb died after being struck in the head by the skis of a Vail employee, Nathan Hall. Hall was initially charged by Eagle County prosecutors with reckless manslaughter, but the case was thrown out and that ruling upheld by a district judge. The Supreme Court has now reinstated the charge. Initial reaction in the industry was negative but, on reflection, it is now being seen as a blessing in disguise. Prosecutors in the state were preparing to push for legislation that would have criminalized reckless skiing under certain circumstances. Such a law on the books would have been very negative. But the Supreme Court’s ruling makes even the introduction of the legislation, let alone its passage, quite unlikely.
World Cup Turns into Austria Cup
The Nations Cup, awarded by Ski Magazine to the national team accumulating the most points in World Cup competition, was easily won by Austria with 19,110 points—about 10 times the U.S. point total of 1,967, which kept them anchored in ninth place, just ahead of Canada. John Fry, Ski‘s editor-at-large, who dreamed up the award in 1966, believes the utter domination by one country, Austria, hurts international interest in ski racing. Many journalists and officials agree.
The U.S. team had its moments of greatness late in the 1999-2000 competition, thanks to back-to-back downhill wins by Daron Rahlves; ditto in slalom by Kristina Koznick. The harsh reality, though, is that today’s bar for medal-winning performance is set awesomely high.
This year’s superstar was, no surprise, Hermann “the Herminator” Maier who won the overall World Cup with an unprecedented 2000 points—bettering the total points of the entire U.S. Ski Team. Training hint to USST czar Bill Marolt: Think testosterone. The Herminator was reported by the Associated Press to have celebrated his four World Cup golds by arriving drunk at a nightclub in Bormio, Italy, stripping to his briefs, tearing open the shirt of his dancing partner before being thrown out, and allegedly later trying to topple a telephone booth and knocking over trash bins.
Not to be outdone on that front, some competitors at the U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships at Stratton, March 16-19, staged a drunken brawl that resulted in arrests on various charges like aggravated assault and resisting arrest. Of the seven brawlers arrested, only one was American, the rest Euros. Can’t we win at anything any more?
Changes Ahead for Terrain Features?
One of the key issues that will be intensely watched at the NSAA Convention concerns the legal ramifications of creating terrain features both in “terrain parks” and more routinely on other terrain. This is not an issue of halfpipes for snowboarders, where the design and operational guidelines are fairly well established; rather it is an issue of what constraints may be imposed—design and operational—on various forms of terrain modification currently being used to provide thrills in the downhill sliding experience.
Historically, the industry has gone from a straightlaced ban on maneuvers that involved undue exposure to risk (e.g. going upside-down and taking air), to a more laissez-faire attitude that said skiing was losing market by denying to skiers the thrill and excitement that boarders were exuberantly getting with their terrain parks and halfpipes. “Freedom” became the rallying cry.
Expect serious discussion at Orlando on how we can deliver on our marketing promises of providing thrills without inviting unacceptable levels of risk. The agonizing conundrum: The “echo boomers,” presumed focus of our marketing efforts, constitute the same generation that demands the thrills that terrain features can provide. It may be less the philosophical issue, and more the complex technical ones, such as controlling access.
Life with the Now “Threatened” Lynx
In March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, administrator of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), finally listed the Canada lynx as “threatened.” A listing had been assumed, and it was just a question of whether the operative word would be “threatened” or “endangered.” What was a surprise, however, was the unequivocal language used to describe the actual distribution of the lynx. It cited the Northern Rockies/Cascades region as “the primary region necessary to support the continued long-term existence of lynx,” and went on to say that “in the Northeast and Southern Rockies regions, the amount of lynx habitat is relatively limited and does not contribute substantially to the persistence of the contiguous U.S. lynx population.”
What next? Ski areas on Forest Service land will still have to cope with the provisions of the Lynx Conservation Strategy that are being written into all Forest Plans. But, there is a feeling now that a subtle shift in the growth/no-growth battlefield is taking place: the lynx and other wildlife issues may have been neutered as the weapon of choice and that issues of water, both quantitative and qualitative, may take over.
Colorado vs. Utah—The Dance Goes On
To highlight the accessibility of Utah’s ski resorts (and by heavy-handed implication, to point fingers at Colorado’s endemic traffic jams on I-70, the skier artery between Denver International Airport (DIA) and ski country), a writer from Boulder, Doug Sabanosh, flew to Salt Lake City and then skied 21,800 vertical feet, spread between seven resorts, starting at 9 a.m. at Park City and finishing at 4 p.m. at Alta and Snowbird in the Little Cottonwood Canyon. SLC Airport, they say, is less than an hour’s drive from 11 of Utah’s 14 ski and snowboard resorts. Tah-dah!
Meanwhile, Colorado’s bottleneck problems may eventually be addressed with a monorail connection from DIA to Eagle County Airport. Colorado Ski Country USA (CSCUSA) would like to see the proposed expenditure of $100 million for a 3.3-mile demonstration project put to public ballot in November. The other proposed remedy is the addition of a flex lane to I-70 to relieve congestion at the worst part of the bottleneck. CSCUSA also favors this.
Aspen Chooses Lonely Position on Alt D
Talk about a turd in the punchbowl! On the highly charged issue of the draft Forest Plan for the White River National Forest, Aspen Skiing Company has come out in favor of Alternative D, arguably the most restrictive to recreation of the six proposed. Aspen was obviously self-conscious about this, as the forceful speak-out by their general counsel, David Bellack, shows (page 16). Interestingly, Aspen does not seem to be ruffling feathers. Melanie Mills, government affairs specialist for Colorado Ski Country USA, says “people understand there are special circumstances involved.” Also interesting was the recent testimony by Lyle Laverty, regional forester for the Rocky Mountain region, that he did not expect the Forest Service to make a final determination on the alternatives until next spring. Cynics see a c.y.a. move allowing the Forest Service to trim its sails for whatever the post-election winds might be.
Big Chief Ignores Squaw Law
James Confalone, owner of Big Squaw Mountain Resort, Maine, says his state’s lawmakers were “ambushed by a small group of Indians,” when they recently banned the word “squaw” from all state place names. He’s taking a stand. Confalone says he considers the word a term of endearment and uses it when addressing his wife and daughter: Big Squaw and Little Squaw. But not respectfully, according to American Indians, who argue the word is offensive and can mean “whore.”
Sports Participation Is Down
National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) research shows American sports participation in 1999 was down from the previous year in almost 60 percent of the activities they measured. That includes alpine skiing (-3.5%), XC skiing (-15.5%), snowboarding (-8.8%); also in a number of sports we identify with, such as golf, tennis, scuba, even all forms of biking. A few are up, like backpacking and kick boxing (65 percent!), but generally, society is getting less active. This has to be discouraging to industry leaders who are talking about the need to grow our participant base by a compounded 4 percent a year. The NSGA research measures the general public; Joy Spring’s analysis on page 54 reflects snowsports participants found at ski areas.
1925 – H. Devereaux Jennings – 2000
Hall-of-Famer Dev Jennings, best known as a pioneer ski marketer, died on April 15 in Plymouth, N.H. In a ski industry career that began after his WW-II service as a combat rifle squad leader in the 10th Mountain Division, and after competing in the 1948 Olympics in Switzerland, Jennings did much to write the book on the marketing of skiing, in the course of which he founded and for nine years directed Ski Utah, headed Waterville Valley Associates for five years and then devoted 20 years as the head of Ski New England.
