anonymous - November 01st, 2005
In response to the initial and subsequent postings I would like to add my comment, however, in order not to endure McCaul Balmer's critique I will use the words of Mr. Bob Berwin to enlighten the visitors of this site about Intrawest's intentions.
Margaret Walker
By Bob Berwyn (www.coloradoskiwriter.com)
Rarely, in all my years of reading, have I come across a book that left me nodding so much and so hard that I ended up with a crick in my neck. But Hal Clifford’s recently published expose of the modern ski industry (Downhill Slide, Sierra Club Books, 2002) did the trick.
I need to put this disclaimer right up front: It’s difficult for me to critique this book objectively. Half a dozen years reporting day-to-day on the same beat lead me to believe that Clifford’s conclusions are mostly on target.
Using Vail Resorts, Intrawest and American Skiing as his poster boys (or whipping boys) Clifford claims the modern ski resort industry has made a conscious choice to focus on residential and commercial “village” real estate development with the goal is of satisfying quarterly Wall Street expectations. The side effect is a neo-colonial exploitation of natural and cultural resources at the expense of the sport, mountain communities and the environment.
Clifford writes about Vail “hollowing itself out” during the 1980s, when local landmarks and watering holes like The Deli, Donovan’s Copper Bar, Garton’s Saloon and the Casino closed down, just as much of the local working population fled town, looking for affordable housing farther down the Eagle River Valley.
Some in the industry will view the book as a frontal attack, but Clifford’s critique is from the heart. His credentials as a life-long skier and long-time ski journalist give his work credence and legitimacy. This is no hatchet job by some anonymous outsider with an axe to grind, though some conservation groups will undoubtedly find new ammunition for their sour-grapes anti-expansion agenda. But Clifford evinces a positive message, making it clear that the unique cultures born in mountain towns have intrinsic social value that can’t be measured in a profit-loss ledger. He is a forceful and articulate advocate for skiing, and his warnings ring true and clear.
“Journalism should tell the truth as you see it,” Clifford says. “The role of the media is to inform the public what’s really going on. “I’m lucky to be able to draw on a long tradition of being able to dig into the facts,” he says of his investigative effort.
“Am I absolutely right? No. But I think I’ve built a cogent case,” Clifford says. He hopes his book will spark conversations and perhaps help crystallize the uneasy feelings shared by many mountain-town denizens across the country who haven’t quite been able to pinpoint the source of their discomfort.
After he outlines the potential consequences of our present course, he makes an impassioned plea for the future of the sport and the towns that cradle and sustain it, calling on residents of mountain communities to take control of their destinies before it’s too late. In the end, there is hope for redemption, he claims, describing a rootsy, no-frills approach to skiing that’s gaining favor in pockets around the country, from New England to California.
“Mountains towns are special. And skiing has such a noble history,” Clifford says. “I hope the role of this book will be to make people aware of the larger picture. Resort executives who serve Wall Street shareholders have a fundamentally different set of priorities from people who are trying to build communities in mountain towns like Breckenridge, Bozeman and Mammoth Lakes. We have to get away from those divergent interests,” he says.
Clifford also says his research revealed a schism within the ski industry. The large, publicly traded companies pin their hopes on the real estate profits generated by the village-building model, but he postulates that those players will get out of the ski business as the baby boomers age and the real estate market cools off. Other ski areas are focusing more on the sport, trying to make the experience affordable and accessible.
“Skiing is not dying; skiing is being killed,” Clifford writes, explaining that the ski industry is moving away from skiers. The corporate ski experience is a “product of desperation, of too many ski areas chasing a diminishing pool of wealthy baby boomers.”
By contrast, Clifford points out that in places like Mad River Glen, Vermont, or Bozeman, Montana, local ski hills are run by skiers as nonprofit co-ops. According to Clifford, local control is critical because it aligns the ski area’s interests with those of the local communities.
A central theme in Downhill Slide is the role of the Forest Service. “One doesn’t have to be a hardcore environmental activist to question the wisdom of letting corporations develop public land in order to service their debt and boost shareholders’ profits without materially advancing the public good,” Clifford writes.
Mountain resort communities are the hottest front in a battle between ideological factions that share little common ground. On one side are development boosters who see nature as a warehouse; on the other are those who believe that nature is a temple.
And according to Clifford, the Forest Service is not impartial. Though bound by law to consider the public interest during a ritualistic decision-making process, he amasses a mountain of evidence indicating that the agency tilts toward the ski industry. Most of the examples will be familiar to local readers, from the Cat III imbroglio at Vail to the on-again, off-again Forest Service approval for the Peak 7 project at Breckenridge.
In fact, many of the chapters in Clifford’s book will feel familiar to readers of ski town papers in Telluride, Vail, Steamboat or Summit County. But when they are all put together into one coherent, thematic package, the result is a significant work that deserves attention from anyone who values the ski experience and who realizes that the quirky individuality that once marked mountain towns as special places is disappearing in a snowball of corporate homogeneity.
Buy this book, read it and pass it on. The future of skiing may depend on it.
Selling the new beast Chapter 5 – selling a lifestyle – something that is a marketing concept, a blow-up sex doll simulacrum of a life, not a way of life nor a life itself.
Nails the hypocrisy of Intrawest perfectly in chapter 5, pg. 90 … will say whatever it takes to sell RE!
Vail “hollowing itself out” in the 80s …
Pg 184 – snowmaking & electricity thirty million pounds of co2 …
Former Aspen journalist Hal Clifford has published his second book, and it is not going to put a smile on the faces of many ski area executives.
"Downhill Slide," which Clifford wrote over several years while building a house and starting a family in Telluride, is a critical look at the modern ski industry and the three big public ski companies, Vail Resorts, Intrawest and American Skiing Co.
The book's central premise is that these companies, and other ski area operators, have lost sight of the real values in skiing and instead are focusing on building cookie-cutter, theme-park ski villages designed to sell real estate and separate skiers from their money.
He also focuses on how those villages, and big ski areas in general, are prompting the rapid urbanization of high mountain valleys.
The subtitle of the book is "Why the Corporate Ski Industry is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns and the Environment." It was published by Sierra Club Books.
Anyone who is curious about the fate of the new Intrawest village proposed for the base of the Snowmass Ski Area, or about the future of the Roaring Fork Valley, will find "Downhill Slide" a fascinating, if somewhat depressing, read.
"I do think think what you are seeing happening here is that Intrawest is executing another one of their masterful sales jobs," Clifford said of the proposed project in Snowmass Village, which is a partnership between Intrawest and the owners of the Aspen Skiing Co. "I'm sure at some point, they told them, 'We are going to make this the number one ski resort in the nation,' which is what they say at each ski area where they build a village."
Clifford, a former Aspen Times columnist, devotes a chapter in the book to how Intrawest develops its villages and how they are rigidly programmed to appear to be lively and spontaneous.
Other chapters focus on how the U.S. Forest Service has become partners with the ski industry instead of regulators guarding public lands and how ski areas are trampling the environment ? if not on the ski areas themselves, then in the mountain valleys surrounding them.
Clifford's work focuses on the "Big Three" publicly traded ski companies, which now account for about a quarter of the nation's skier visits, and the local Skico comes in for light treatment.
Clifford calls the Crown family's ownership of the Skico a "benevolent monarchy" compared to the Wall Street-driven actions of Vail, Intrawest and American Skiing, yet he also points to the Roaring Fork Valley as one of the classic examples of what happens when a ski town becomes valued more for its real estate than its skiing experiences.
"My interests was always in looking at publicly traded ski companies," Clifford said when asked why he did not focus more on the Skico. "When you bring the Wall Street imperative to these mountain communities, it has a quantitative and qualitative difference. But Aspen showed many other players in the industry how much money was out there and how much money was interested in the lifestyle."
Clifford contrasts the pure enjoyment of skiing with what some ski companies are now selling with their "New Ski Villages."
"Whistler works like Disneyland works or like Carnival Cruise Lines works," he said of Intrawest's biggest village. "That has a certain appeal to a certain segment of the market, but I think it is a disservice to take this wonderful sport and convert it to something resembling land-locked cruise ships."
Clifford offers some examples of smaller ski areas, such as Bogus Basin in Idaho, returning "back to the future" of skiing by offering discount ski passes to attract more skiers and not jumping on the ski village bandwagon that has swept the industry in the past five years.
And he hopes people in Aspen and other ski towns will read the book to gain a better understanding of what is happening in the industry.
"I have tried to show the man behind the curtain pulling the levers," Clifford said. "And the book may inform people in ski towns what is happening in other places. People get their heads down and they don't recognize what is happening out there. And the power of the big three ski companies is in their ability to set the pace in the ski industry. Other resorts can quickly feel that 'We've got to play their game and if we don't, we will fall behind.'"
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