Mountain Town News
By Allen Best
Smaller resorts seek magic formula
JACKSON, Wyo. – Could another small but loved ski area fall by the wayside? That’s the nagging question in Jackson after owners of Snow King Resort asked community leaders to help explore financial options during coming months.
Snow King’s owners seem to do okay with their hotel and convention center, but the ski hill has lost money for decades, says Manuel “Manny” Lopez, the resort managing partner.
The ski area has respectable terrain, 500 acres altogether with 1,571 feet of vertical, just six blocks from downtown Jackson. Unlimited ski passes cost $239, just $139 if purchased early. Often called the Town Hill, it’s especially good for getting in a few turns during lunch.
Located seven miles from Jackson, the better-known Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has 4,139 vertical, 5 times as much in-bounds terrain, 6 times the cost and vastly more and speedier uphill conveyances.
While Snow King has developed some real estate, with entitlements secured for other projects, it lacks the profit centers such as food services and ski school that provide the money for destination ski area operations.
The Community Foundation of Jackson Hole has stepped up, creating a group called Friends of Snow King. “The purpose of it is to take a look at the long-term viability of Snow King and the possibility of a governance model that would be a non-profit,” explained Katharine Conover, president of the foundation, in an interview with the Jackson Hole News&Guide.
Mark Baron, Jackson mayor, said the ski hill anchors the town as much as the Town Square. He suggested he wouldn’t be averse to using a portion of the new lodging tax proceeds set aside for visitor services, such as buses and pathways, to help prop up the in-town ski hill.
Bob McLaurin, the town manager, reports that the Jackson community will be studying Bozeman, Mont., which operates the Bridger Bowl via a non-profit group that operates under the federal government’s 501(c)(4) tax code. Annual membership is $25.
In Wyoming, with its vast distances and sparse populations, many small ski areas have been barely hanging on. A web-based news agency called WyoFile recently looked at the economics of several so-called mom-and-pops.
For small ski areas to succeed, sources tell WyoFile, they need a solid core of volunteers. But they also need customers. And there just aren’t many in Wyoming.
“Our biggest problem is we don’t have the people,” said Lucas Todd, who owns a sporting goods store in Buffalo, Wyo.
“For any of these places to make it, they need to find somebody with a big heart and deep pockets,” he said.
Ski areas old and new
McCALL, Idaho – Even as Brundage ski area celebrates its 50th year of operation, Tamarack – a new resort with grand ambitions in the same area of west-central Idaho – has struggled to open after a year of dormancy.
Brundage, a smallish ski area with about 2,000 feet of vertical, was opened in 1960. Two names familiar in the intermountain West were involved: Corey Engen and J.R. Simplot.
Engen, one of three skiing brothers from Utah that became prominent, was a ski instructor at a small hill in McCall at the time. Boise-based Simplot, even then well on his way to a vast fortune in potatoes, computers and other pursuits, told Engen they needed a bigger ski area — up on the big mountain above Payette Lake.
Brundage has operated as a day area, with no more lodging than needed by a night watchman. But it has been in expansion mode. It added 160 acres in 2007, and in 2009 it won approval for a major housing development of up to 1,200 units.
Eventually, Brundage hopes to expand sufficiently to bring the comfortable carrying capacity of the mountain from 2,700 skiers per day to 7,100 skiers per day, according to the ski area’s website.
Tamarack, meanwhile, managed to open for skiing operations by Christmas, but with a far more limited schedule than when it opened in 2004.
The fate of the resort continues to be sorted out in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Riding the real estate bubble at its opening, Tamarack binged on real estate sales and, to a lesser extent, building. In 2005 it hosted President George W. Bush on a mountain biking vacation. Andre Agassi planned to build a luxury hotel.
In 2007, reality set in as sales lagged. Co-owner Jean-Pierre Boespflug and his partner owe more than $350 million to creditors, the largest being Credit Suisse Group. The AP notes that after the bankruptcy a local man sold bumper stickers that read: “Honk if JP owes you money.”
With continued hemorrhaging of money, the ski lifts were shut down early in 2010.
Since then, Boespflug has chosen a new business group from the Boise area called Green Valley Holding as the preferred buyer.
Green Valley has committed $40 million to the resort. However, somebody else could come in with a higher bid. Boespflug told AP that he hopes to have the ownership transferred by mid-April.
The public faces of Green Valley are Boise-area businessmen Matte D. Hutcheson and Larry Givens.
There has been much speculation over the last two years whether one of the major ski companies, such as Vail Resorts, would swoop in and pick up the pieces. Perhaps tellingly, another ski area operator – JMA Ventures, which has Red Lodge in Montana and Homewood and Alpine Meadows in the Lake Tahoe Basin – bid lower than the Boise-based consortium.
Very fundamentally, Tamarack suffered in its bid to become a major new destination resort by its isolation. It’s 90 miles of sometimes twisting, two-lane road from Boise, site of the closest major airport.
While the ownership of Tamarack gets sorted out, the ski area will run during holidays and otherwise during long weekends during a 15-week season. The homeowners group at Tamarack ponied up $250,000 in seed money, but with plans to limit operating costs to $1.5 million. Associated Press reports 500 season passes were sold.
Patrollers get avy devices
JACKSON, Wyo. – After a ski patroller was killed and others trapped inside a lodge last winter, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort began giving patrollers a device called an ABS air bag.
Made by Mountain Safety Systems in Whistler, B.C., it is a backpack fitted with a collapsed bag that inflates when the person wearing it pulls a toggle. The idea is that the inflation will keep an avalanche victim on the surface of the snow.
Citing a letter from resort officials to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in September, the Jackson Hole News&Guide reports that ski patrollers are wearing the safety devices on a large scale for the first time.
The resort also will require helmets of all employees starting next season. Another ski patroller at Jackson Hole who died of head injuries in a fall had not been wearing a helmet.
Grand Lake Lodge sold
GRAND LAKE, Colo. – After being on the market for several years, the venerable Grand Lake Lodge has been sold to a subsidiary of the Regency Hotel Management for a reported $4 million.
The lodge has 56 cabins, a majestic restaurant, and the atmosphere of knotty pine that characterized tourism when the lodge was originally constructed in 1920. It sits within Rocky Mountain National Park.
The new owners, who also manage 50 other properties under the brand names of Starwood, Regency and Best Western, say they hope to figure out ways to stretch the season, currently limited to 100 to 120 days maximum.
Allen Best can be reached at: www.allenbest.net.
