Is it Getting Hot Around Here?
The U.N.’s 5th World Conference on Sport and Environment laid it on thick when it reported in early December that global warming threatens ruin to many low-elevation ski resorts around the world, especially in Europe. The predictions are based on projections for warmer nights, as well as greater irregularity to storms, with smaller but steady storms being replaced by bigger and fewer storms. When is this all going to happen? In the case of Europe, they’re talking some lead time: 30 to 50 years out.
“Climate change will have the effect of pushing more and more winter sports higher and higher up mountains, concentrating impacts in ever-decreasing high-altitude areas,” says the report’s co-author, Dr. Rold Burki, an economic geographer at Switzerland’s University of Zurich.
Among the worst-case scenarios: In Austria, snow levels are predicted to retreat 650 to 1,000 feet. Reliable snow now graces 85 percent of Switzerland’s ski resorts, but that could fall to 63 percent. Some forecasters predict that natural snowfall in Australia will be but a memory by the latter half of this century.
North American resorts should expect less severe impacts, particularly for the next 25 years, partly because of higher base elevations for many Western resorts. However,the report says Canada’s Lakelands region north of Toronto should expect seasons reduced between 7 and 32 percent by mid-century, and possibly by 50 percent within 80 years,
It’s Time to Keep Winter Cool
NSAA’s Keep Winter Cool program can’t reverse centuries of warming, but the program designed to raise public awareness of the need to reduce greenhouse gases and combat climate change is gathering momentum in its second year. The two newest partners (in addition the Natural Resources Defense Council, which partnered with NSAA last winter) are the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF). The WHC seeks to partner with resorts to help them manage land in a way complementary to wildlife. The BEF partnered with Mt. Hood Meadows last year with a “green tag” program, which supports renewable energy production, and hopes to extend the program this winter. Keep Winter Cool is scheduled for Feb. 21. NSAA expects participation to build on last year’s inaugural efforts.
It’s Time for Diversity
What better time to promote diversity than on Martin Luther King Day? Determined to reach out to different ethnic groups, Pat’s Peak (N.H.) director of services Jim Wall launched Diversity Day at Pat’s Peak two years ago. “There was a bit of apprehension at first,” he told SAM. “A non-discriminatory stance scares some people.” Especially in a state that is about 99 percent white. But no longer–in a symbolic show of statewide acceptance, the governor will proclaim Jan. 19 Diversity Day in New Hampshire.
For its part, Pat’s offers deeply discounted skiing from 2-9 p.m. to groups with, well, diverse ethnic backgrounds, including organizations Asian Outdoor and B’nai B’rith, as well as gay and lesbian groups. And it has been wildly successful: in its first year, it drew about 1,000 participants. With the state’s influential Democratic presidential primary in full swing this year, Wall hopes to attract one of the candidates to speak, and draw the Day’s biggest crowd yet.
Sneak Attack
Alpine Meadows marketing director Brad Wilson had a simple, clever pricing scheme, a day-ticket version of shock and awe: $39, no restrictions, provisos or asterisks–a price not seen at the area’s ticket window since 1990. He planned to unveil it late in the fall, after competitors had published their own, much higher, prices. Business would boom. Plans were made for limiting ticket sales on super-busy days.
Alas, a magazine intern’s carelessness changed everything. Five weeks before Wilson was set to spring the news, Sugar Bowl marketing director Greg Murtha happened to see the price in a magazine ad prior to its publication and sounded the alarm and developed his own $39 day-ticket ticket program–although it’s only available at Safeway supermarkets. Then Northstar created a similar program in partnership with sports retailing giant REI.
Ah, what mischief do these interns wreak!
Tamarack on the Rebound?
Last summer Tamarack Resort in Idaho postponed its opening, scheduled for this season, until 2004-05. Now it’s not clear that the area will make that date. With more than $50 million invested in the project, principals J.P. Boespflug and Alfredo Miguel were rumored to be short on cash last fall before they obtained an $18 million loan from direct private lender Kennedy Funding, once described by the Wall St. Journal as a “last-resort lender.” The loan paid for completion of infrastructure projects that will enable Tamarack to conduct a sale of more than 100 homesites this month. Tamarack hopes to raise roughly $50 million from the lot sales, which would allow the area to repay its loan. The resort could then obtain additional funding to complete construction of its golf course and build the two express chairs that will access the area’s summit. At least, that’s the plan.
Tempest in a Teapot—er, Helmet
When Consumer Reports declared the Boeri Rage “not acceptable” and ranked two other Boeri helmets at the bottom of the acceptable list, alarms sounded at the company’s headquarters. Boeri, after all, is the largest supplier of rental helmets to ski resorts, and people might doubt their safety. But the furor died down after Boeri explained that the helmet tested by CR was no longer in the line, and pointed out that the test method varied from the industry’s ASTM and CE standards in significant and arbitrary ways. Even a spokesman for Giro, one of Boeri’s main competitors and the biggest victor in the CR report (its helmets ranked first and second), downplayed the story.
This Town’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us
Warren Miller likes to say, “If everyone skied, there would be no wars.” Oh yeah? To prove otherwise, Fischer ski company and Freeskier Magazine are sponsoring Fight Night amateur boxing at Colorado and Wyoming resorts from early January to mid-March. Venues range from the aptly-named Duke’s Night Club in Aspen to the Snow King Resort in Jackson Hole. Any amateur who feels the need to whup someone can enter. There are three weight classes and a women’s division; each fight lasts a maximum of three one-minute rounds. Sixteen-ounce gloves and safety gear are provided. Female pacifists vie to be the nightly “card girl” who parades around the ring in a bikini, holding a big card indicating which round is about to begin. Male pacifists should have stopped reading by now.
into the wild jet-blue yonder
Adversity makes for strange bedfellows: after years of declaring returns from developing ski travel promotions were just not worth the effort, airlines are doing resort deals like crazy. And it’s not just the high-fliers like Vail, Frontier and United, either. Jet Blue is working with Vermont areas to bring skiers from New York and Florida into Burlington. And why not? Burlington has been setting new enplanement records just about every month.
ADVERTISING IN THE NATIONAL FOREST
There has been nervousness in both the ski area industry and in Forest Service circles over the long-standing regulations (and their interpretation) that prohibit commercial advertising on National Forest land. Years ago, plans to turn lift towers into outdoor advertising billboards were, to almost everyone’s satisfaction, beaten back.
Then came the “trial basis” approval last year for Aspen’s “MapLinks”–trail maps and associated display ads on restraining bars. When renewal for 2003-04 came up in October, Martha Ketelle, Forest Supervisor for the White River National Forest, gave the green light but wanted to make sure nobody mistook this as long-term approval of the program. She added that the Forest Service will, over the course of the next year, “be exploring at a broader level the issue of advertising vs. sponsorship vs. underwriting.” For its part, the resort industry wanted the Forest Service not to panic–not to feel pressured.
One of the interesting outcomes of Aspen’s experience with MapLinks is that they are using far fewer trail maps. Translation: considerably less litter.
Everyone is moving very cautiously,keeping the issue as a work in progress. So far so good. NSAA and Forest Service officials plan to discuss the idea at the Western Trade Show in Vail next month.
