*Reviewed by David Rowan*
Unlike the current slew of gorgeous coffee table books about ski resorts (Mammoth, Whistler, Steamboat and Stowe are recent examples), *The Snow Summit Story* is a book written by a ski resort professional about the world he grew up in as a child and the ski area he went on to direct for the past 30 years or so.
The author, Dick Kun, is the president of Snow Summit in Southern California; but more than that, as the son and stepson, respectively, of Jo and Tommi Tyndall, the area’s founders, he literally grew up with the area. It is a compelling story, told with great honesty and considerable wit, full of anecdotes that help account for the special air of passion that has always permeated the operation.
As with the stories of most ski operations that date from 50 or so years ago, this is a tale of extraordinary hardships—setbacks of every sort, most especially financial and climatic—that beset the founding team in what the author characterizes as “the desperate years” of 1952 to 1964.
How’s this for discouraging: your chairlift, a primitive sort of detachable, is something of a disaster, dropping a chair at one point. Then, in its first summer, it kills a passenger when a chair gets hung up on tower sheaves. Add chronic snow drought to the mix—one week of operations in 1957, three in 1958. Typical annual gross receipts under $50,000. Through it all, the area survived—even surviving its biggest loss, the accidental tractor death of its charismatic leader, Tommi, in 1964.
Over the years Snow Summit grew on the shoulders of an extraordinarily loyal customer base to become a successful, innovative industry leader. It is a terrific story, to be savored by other ski area professionals for its relentlessly real and gritty details. Tired of the excesses of the luxury destination ski scene? This book is a welcome antidote.
