I first realized industrialized skiing was in trouble when the ink on my business cards as a Skiing magazine “Executive Editor” was still wet. This was 2003, and I was driving one of the best ski cars ever built: a Saab 900 hatchback. I’d picked up mine with 180K on the broken odometer. The studded snows cost twice as much as the car.
It was in this vehicle that I arrived at the luxurious Sonnenalp resort at Vail, and handed the keys to a valet I’m sure was about to tell me to get my beater out of there. I was in town to meet with the executive team of Vail Resorts, back when that company kept offices in the mountains where they operated. I was as out of place as my car.
In the meeting, I mentioned that Skiing readers would ski through lunch and eat Pop-Tarts on the chair. Stupid editor: That class of customer was why Vail got rid of the base lodges where day skiers once stashed bootbags and salami sandwiches, instituted pay parking, and raised day-ticket pricing high enough to drive season pass sales instead.
That education in the business of industrialized skiing feels quaint today, as so many of the big destination resorts—I’ve dubbed them “Big Glisse”—have abandoned workaday skiers in the search for more money.
What follows are some of the other boneheaded moves Big Glisse makes.
But first a prologue: Before you write me off as just another whining bro, know that I have spent much of my career as a writer and editor experiencing ski areas as customers do. Think of this story as the equivalent of a secret shopper giving feedback to a retailer, or a restaurant reviewer appraising chefs. Discount it at your peril.
Big Glisse forgot that mountain capacity matters more than lift capacity.
At Berkshire East—where my brother and I skied as kids in the 1970s—when the lift lines got long, they sent out hot dog vendors to appease folks. And when the lines got really long, they tapped a keg in the snow and said, “free beer!” No more lines. The base was as alive as the endzone seats at Foxboro.
Today, when lines form in the morning, customers take pictures of the queue and post them. Big Glisse, which worships volume over all else, doesn’t want anyone to know they have lift lines, so it buys more lifts. Great, except the skiable terrain has barely budged.
Big Glisse misreads lift-line posts on Instagram as bad press. When I see lift lines on Instagram they are often associated with big storms and fresh snow and delayed openings for avalanche control. I think, “Wow, looks like the powder day of the season. Wish I was there.” But when I see shots of runs so crowded they look like protest marches—a trail capacity problem—I think, “I would not partake of that 30-mph scrum.”
Warming huts became luxury dining.
It gets cold when you’re skiing and snowboarding. It’s nice to duck inside a shack with a wood stove to warm up. But at Big Glisse, if you pop into what was once a warming hut, they will ask for reservations. There’s a locker room with fuzzy slippers, a maître d’, and there are granite countertops (yawn) in the shitter, but none of that is for you.
Freedom has been canceled.
Throughout history, skiers booted up in slopeside parking lots, walked to the lifts, and seared moose steaks on tailgate hibachi grills for lunch. Warren Miller, remember, lived in a tag-along trailer in ski area parking lots. Each spring during the ’80s, my Plymouth State College classmates and I took over the Cannon tram lot for après—because you can’t throw footballs and frisbees in the bar. When it’s warm enough, a parking lot is to skiers what a beach is to surfers.
But then, inspired by Vegas and theme parks, Big Glisse said, “We too shall funnel and fleece our customers.” Now, with the slopeside lots turned into condotels, you park too far away to walk, ride an open-air shuttle like it’s Santa Land, and get deposited in some faux Tyrolean village to window shop before you are quite literally corralled into the lift maze and again in the cafeteria.
Skiers and snowboarders love the word “free”—freestyle, freeskiing, and freeride—because that’s how skiing and snowboarding make you feel. But Big Glisse frowns on free.
Big Glisse does not grow new skiers—it repels them.
My brother and I learned to ski at King Ridge, N.H. (RIP), which offered the LLL package: Lifts, Lessons and Lunch for $7.50. But when we were still too young for lessons, my parents put us in the ski area daycare for what my mother remembers was $2. Ski area daycare kept my parents skiing, which ultimately meant they raised skiers.
At Big Glisse destinations, affordable daycare is over. Even if it wasn’t, the ski schools are overrun, kiddo class sizes are way too big for learning, and you might find yourself five drainages away from your children. This, plus the cost of rentals, lodging, dining, parking, and the rest, is no way to try to bring new skiers into the sport—except for the children of your wealthiest guests.
The interactions are often negative.
Every December for 20 years, I headed to Vail for Product Intro Week to ski with hardgoods people on next year’s skis. And every year for 20 years, resort employees in yellow jackets screamed at everyone at the event to SLOW DOWN!
The ski testers who appeared to be going too fast were making controlled turns. Yet the Yellow Jackets say nothing to folks who are going slower but skiing faster than is safe for their skill level.
I’m not trying to single out Vail. But this is an example of how Big Glisse forgets it’s selling freedom.
If you feel like you need to police skiers, then train your mall cops to recognize who is increasing risk and who is not. Just because someone is arcing a turn doesn’t mean they are going too fast. As someone who has witnessed at least a dozen collisions, bad skiers moving at moderate speeds are the greater threat.
They forgot about the lifers.
Big Glisse is now part of the American caste system, which has pushed employees and less-than-wealthy residents out of town and down valley—and sometimes out of the valley entirely.
The people that make the Big Glisse ski areas go don’t live there anymore. The folks teaching skiing, running groomers, bumping chairs, and heading out with headlamps on avalanche routes can no longer afford to live near their work. Other lifelong skiers and ski bums were forced out, too.
This segregation resulted from a de facto privatization by pricing strategy that began with tearing down public base lodges, charging for parking, and jacking day ticket prices. And it’s killing the culture and the experience.
I was chatting about this the other day with a colleague in the ski media. I’ll leave you with his question: “What if the NFL took the same position that ‘core is poor,’ and actively worked to exclude its most loyal customers?
