Vail Resorts announced it has purchased the Andermatt-Sedrun resort in Switzerland. I’ve never heard of it, but it appears to be big. The press release said that the current management will finish off the season, with the deal scheduled to close over the summer. The press release says:
Vail Resorts and ASA plan to continue to operate Andermatt-Sedrun with a local, independent focus by retaining all employees, the existing operational infrastructure, and local expertise. Vail Resorts will selectively incorporate areas of expertise from its business strategy, including enhancements to data-driven marketing and analytics capabilities, accessibility with the Epic Pass product lineup, and best practice sharing from its portfolio of operations.
We’ve heard that before. Unleash the quants! An army of MBAs will spend the summer figuring out which lifts and restaurants to close. They will begin extracting shareholder value next winter. The Swiss take their skiing very seriously. This could be the end of Swiss neutrality.
It’s been a dismal ski season. Mother Nature was most uncooperative, with a very warm fall that almost precluded snowmaking until December. Then we had enough snow in December to think that the worst drought cycle in the West in 1,200 years had come to an end. Wrong. The crowds at Christmas were crushing. There was limited terrain open, and we saw lift lines that were shocking and unprecedented here. And that was the good part.
The winter at Park City Mountain Resort was defined by parking nightmares, traffic jams, insufferable lift lines, unexplained lift closures, cold $9 hot dogs and chronic understaffing. Of course the corporate geniuses at Vail Resorts headquarters managed to push things to an extreme, and we were hours away from a ski patrol strike for the MLK holiday weekend over an embarrassingly modest pay increase. Fortunately, that worked out. To complete the list, this week we had summer temperatures, rain and lightning that shut everything down. Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the ski season?
Deer Valley got off to a marginally better start. They opened later, giving them time to catch up on the snowmaking once the weather turned cold. For opening day, they were pretty much completely open — something of a miracle given the weather conditions. They fired the general manager days before opening and brought in somebody from corporate to repair the damage done by his predecessor’s “reimagining” of things. On Christmas Day, Mark Brownlie, the new interim manager, was at Empire Lodge apologizing to season pass holders and reassuring them that they were on it, and would quickly get things back into Deer Valley shape. To their credit, they did. The rest of the season ran as smoothly as it could with the uncooperative weather. Late in March, there were three kinds of pie to choose from at Empire Lodge. It felt like pre-COVID, pre-Alterra Deer Valley by the end of the season (other than Snow Park). But there were still stickers that said, “Bring Back Bob,” showing up here and there all season. The natives are restless.
It’s hard to run a ski resort when it doesn’t snow. This winter was a disaster when it comes to snowfall, and snow’s a lot more important than the number of pie selections (though after a morning in the spring bumps on Empire, the apple hit the spot). We went more than two months without any significant snow. Since then, it’s been mostly an inch or two in widely spaced storms, punctuated with rain and excessive heat. There were some actual powder days, but they were few and far between. Both resorts worked miracles grooming what little there was, but in the end, you can’t groom dirt. Three weeks left, and the countdown of Biblical plagues has begun. It should be raining frogs any day now. As we say on the farm, there’s always next year.
Snowbird announced their season pass prices for next year. A full season is $1,149. More than an Epic Pass, half of a Deer Valley season pass. But the interesting thing was a $799 “preferred parking pass.” Traffic in Little Cottonwood Canyon is terrible, and makes our problems seem like child’s play. So for $799 (the price of an Epic Locals), you can buy preferred parking in a special lot. There were no details about whether that absolutely guarantees you a place to park. I suspect that it doesn’t. They must sell more passes than there are spots on the assumption that not everybody will be there every day.
The preferred pass also doesn’t buy you a preferred spot in the traffic queue up the canyon. The parking pass isn’t new. It was available this year for $699. But it’s an indication of a new reality in skiing — we’ve hit capacity and have begun rationing ski access. A place to park is worth 70% of the skiing itself. The Epic Pass goes the other direction, and “democratizes” skiing by making the pass relatively affordable. They democratized the base facilities by having their customers park at the grocery store.
In the last 20 years, the population of Utah has increased by over a million people, or about 45%. There are more people trying to use the same recreational infrastructure. There aren’t 45% more lifts or terrain (or national parks). No wonder it feels crowded. An eight-seater lift at Silverlode won’t fix that.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.