Take the notion that, in the last 20 years, “the number of U.S. resorts has decreased by about one-third in the past 20 years,” as was stated recently in one of the leading ski mags. This factoid arrives, I think, by what is known today as “connecting the dots.” But it’s sort of important to know which dots to connect. If you take a list of ski areas from any official source—let’s say National Ski Areas Association—from 20 years ago and compare it to their 2002 list, you would certainly find a substantial decline.
A simple connection between two dots.
Now add a few more dots. Twenty years ago, in Vermont, you would have found such resorts as Pico, Haystack, Carinthia and Glen Ellen. Today they are gone. Just memories. What a loss!
But did we lose them? Not exactly. We lost their identities, but skiers and riders are happily enjoying their slopes and trails. Pico is but one of the peaks known collectively as Killington, Glen Ellen as Mount Ellen, part of Sugarbush. Haystack and Carinthia are seamlessly a part of what we today enjoy as Mt. Snow.
Or, look at the state of Washington, where, 20 years ago, there was a cluster of four separate areas—Ski Acres, Snoqualmie, Hyak and Alpental—which are now listed as one consolidated Snoqualmie Summit.
Yes, of course the number of ski areas has declined in real terms, but the significance is not in their number, nor is it in the loss of skier visits; I would guess that the large majority of defunct ski areas had skier visit totals of under 15,000. The real loss has been in reducing entry into the sport. Every local ski facility, no matter how small, was a port of entry. Some estimates list as many as 1,400 ski areas operating at one time. (I think a thousand is more realistic, but the point is the same.)
Certainly, the flatness of our market is in large measure attributable to this decline in exposure. As I wrote in these pages six years ago, “Countless children got their first taste of skiing on the small hills locally available to them. That has largely gone, and gone for good.” But it’s pointless to cry about what was economic inevitability.
The existence of all those ski areas has, though, spawned a new business among the history buffs. Log onto the website of the New England Lost Ski Areas Project (www.nelsap.org) and you can learn about the hundreds of ski areas that once existed. A similar project is underway in Colorado.
But this is the stuff of nostalgia. These were tiny operations by today’s standards. And that’s ultimately the point I would make: Don’t let all the talk about the declining number of ski areas cloud your judgment. Our industry and sport may have problems, but this is not one of them.
