The Snow Gods Must Be Crazy
Dan Egan sounds like a lunatic. Egan, general manager of Tenney Mountain, N.H., plans to begin making snow for the area’s summer snow-sliding season on June 1. (Yes, you read that right.) Planned attractions include a tubing hill and a terrain park on a swath of snow 600 feet long by 75 feet wide. Tubing will be the top priority, but the resort has also scheduled big-air camps in June.
Two questions come to mind: how, and why? The how: Tenney is owned by SnowMagic Entertainment USA, which manufactures shaved-ice snowguns. The area will use one such gun to create 50 tons of snow per night, enough to replenish the 12 to 18 inches of coverage on the one-acre-plus sliding area despite July’s average temperature of 68 degrees F. The resulting Tenney Mountain Glacier will be open for private parties in the afternoons, and open to the public in the evenings till 9 p.m., seven days a week.
The why: Advance bookings by late April assured that summer operations will more than break even, Egan said. “There are lots of tourists around in summer,” he explained. And snow production costs are a mere $500 a day. But fall is where the real money is. From October 1 to December 12, Tenney plans to bring in additional SnowMagic guns and open a 2,800-foot-long trail. The area will rent the trail to race teams during the week (several have booked time already), then open to the public on weekends. Egan expects fall revenues will comprise one-quarter to onethird of the area’s annual revenues. Maybe he’s not so crazy after all.
Oh-So-Revealing Sign of the Times
It seems somehow appropriate that Grand Targhee, in the heart of the Grand Tetons, named one of its peaks Mary’s Nipple. The label was a tribute to a local waitress and streaker who graced the area in the 1970s, and the Targhee trail map honored her for i
decades. But pressure from skiers and I
tourists recently shamed the resort into a show of modesty: it covered the “Nipple” on mountain signs with tape until new signs, [line unreadable — scan fold] visitors now [unreadable] a name change for those eye-poppingly [unreadable] SAM will keep you abreast of the [unreadable] news.
The Hazy View From Wall Street
The usually reliable *Wall Street Journal* has once again managed to misrepresent the winter resort industry. In early April, the daily diary of the American dream stated that the goal in the ski business, as the season drew to its stormy, snow-filled close, was to “bring back visitors who have been staying away in droves due to the uncertain economy and, more recently, war apprehensions.” It continued, “The nation’s ski resorts badly need a lift. Not only have they been hard hit by the general slump in travel, but some are struggling under heavy debt loads after five years of mediocre snowfall, coupled in some cases with ambitious expansion plans.” Staying away in droves? Heavy debt loads? Lack of snow? Makes us wonder if those *Journal* reporters ever step outside–Wall Street itself had good-to-excellent snow cover for much of the winter.
Perhaps the *Journal* got its news from the quarterly reports of a few publicly traded companies, who blamed the usual suspects (war and economy) for below-expectations results. Hey, it works for IBM and Home Depot. But just once we’d like to see the *Journal* get the winter resort story right.
Revenge of the Lynx
Ski area managers can expect a slower, more tedious approval process in Colorado and several other states, even for relatively small tree-clearing projects, as a result of a recent court decision to extend protection of lynx habitat. The first casualty: Keystone recently backed off plans to develop Jones Gulch, an expansion that would have added advanced terrain close to the River Run village, in large part because of the lynx issue.
In a far-reaching decision, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency had violated the Endangered Species Act in finding that the Northeast, the Great Lakes and the Southern Rockies do not amount to a significant portion of the range of lynx. Instead, Judge Kessler ordered the agency to go back and
determine if critical lynx habitat does exist in these regions and specified 60-day progress reports. Originally, Fish and Wildlife had concluded that these areas could largely be ignored in favor of lynx recovery in Montana, Idaho and the Cascade Mountains, where the lynx remain relatively abundant.
The agency has said it lacks resources to complete the judge’s request until 2005. Until critical habitat is identified, the agency cannot issue not-likely-to-affect determinations in large batches. Instead, formal consultation is required for even small projects. Because the agency has limited staff, long delays are likely.
“We hope that a streamlined approach will happen, but it’s too early to say,” said Geraldine Link, director of public policy for the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA). She said the NSAA is unlikely to intervene in an appeal. A Fish and Wildlife Agency spokeswoman said the agency had not decided whether to appeal.
Congress, however, might take matters into its own hands. “I think this judge’s decision is the kind of abusive power under the Endangered Species Act that the House Resources Committee is extremely interested in stopping,” says Link. Doug Hyde, press secretary for the committee’s new chairman, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., said, “It’s not an issue he [Pombo] is going to let drop. Certainly, the Endangered Species Act revisions will be visited in this Congress.”
Jibbing at St. Mary’s
Developer Matthew Hood has purchased the site of an abandoned resort on St. Mary’s Glacier, about 40 minutes from downtown Denver, and hopes to convert it into a terrain park and halfpipe resort. Hood has quietly sought advice and opinion from industry veterans, and SE Group will begin a feasibility study this spring. The elevation (10,000 feet), vertical (1,360 feet), and acreage (300) would support only a small-sized ski resort, and a relatively flat one at that–but could host a world-class pipe and park.
And that is Hood’s plan. The area would open for day and night skiing/riding from November into April. Hood, a sometime resident of nearby Summit County and an automotive and industrial consultant in Detroit, says that financing will not be a problem. But he acknowledged that local opposition and environmental issues dating from the site’s mining days could turn his plan into a pipe dream.
Keeping Up With the Olympic Movement
From the boardroom to boardercross, change is afoot in the family of organizations that make up the Olympic movement.
After months of scandals and forced resignations, the U.S. Olympic Committee is poised to make major changes and reduce its board of directors from 123 to nine. As a result, the organization that oversees the national governing bodies will be run more like a business (hopefully, without the accounting scandals).
The changes will be good for skiing, said U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association head Bill Marolt. The USSA athletic programs get 10 percent of their funding from the USOC, so any improvement there benefits the teams. “The USOC needs to set its priorities,” he told *SAM*. “Number one has to be athletic success. That means delivering maximum support to the athletes. That’s the barometer.”
The U.S. ski team has witnessed its own personnel changes, with many coaching positions changing hands. Situation normal, said Marolt. “Staff changes happen at the end of every year,” he said. “Looking forward to 2006, our programs are in good shape but need a bit of a spark, a little push.” The team’s new leaders are expected to stay in place through the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy.
The desire for a little spark explains the IOC’s recent decision to add an upstart event like boardercross in the 2006 Games, Marolt said. “The IOC and FIS are looking for new events that will add interest and pizzazz. Boardercross attracts the public, TV, sponsors. We think it’s a good trend to see the IOC pay attention to these things,” he said. And Marolt expects U.S. athletes to be medal contenders. “We have a good talent base there,” he added.
Short Swings
Texas snowboarder Michael Wolff, 20, was charged with child abuse and reckless endangerment after plowing into a line of 5- to 7-year-old beginners in a ski class at Sunlight Mountain in Glenwood Springs, Colo. Three kids were injured; one suffered a broken leg. . . . Speaking of vermin: Venture Programs hopes to unveil bioterror insurance for the hospitality industry within the next 2-3 months. In addition to insuring against anthrax and smallpox, Venture expects to cover SARS as well. . . . There’s a new would-be Whistler killer near Squamish, on the road (more or less) to North America’s busiest winter resort. The site on Mount Meslilloet is said to offer Whistler-sized vertical, with greater snowfall and a bigger glacier. Hangups: the project is tied to a proposed new road to Squamish, and faces the usual environmental opposition.
