Ski Resorts and Public Land
From rickety rope tows to six-person lifts at enormous corporate resorts, skiing’s come a long way over the last century. How’d we get here, and what’s public land got to do with it?
Table of contents
Early History
Skiing goes back thousands of years. You read that right. Thousands. Rock paintings and fragments of objects that were likely used to glide in heavy snow have been found in Russia and Scandinavia. Norse mythology even boasts of gods of skiing. For much of that time, skiing was a practical activity, pursued mainly for survival rather than pure fun.
Perhaps no historic event sums up these early days of skiing as well as one fateful ski in 1206. Norway was in the midst of a civil war, and a young prince was in danger. Two of the strongest skiers in the country donned birch bark leggings (earning them the name Birkebeiners) and huffed it on skis over two mountain passes and about 55 kilometers to bring the prince to safety. Later, that prince was crowned the king of Norway. Today, famed races in Norway and America continue to commemorate the event.
Skiing Comes to the U.S.
Pioneered by Scandinavian immigrants, skiing made its way to North America in the mid-1800s. It initially landed in New England, where most new settlers found their home. In the early years, skiers either hoofed their way to the top of the local hills with skinny lanes cleared for skiing or took rugged rope tows to reach higher ground. It was only in the 1890s that ski turning became a thing, enabling skiers to tackle steeper and more difficult terrain. As trains, cars, and gold brought people West, skiing followed.
The history of the federal government’s involvement with skiing starts in Yellowstone National Park. In 1886, the U.S. Army deployed cavalry soldiers to patrol the park for poaching and other illegal activities. In the park’s harsh hills and mountains, skis and snowshoes offered the only way to travel in winter. When the National Park Service (NPS) took over management in 1916, the agency tried to bolster winter tourism to the rugged, snow-blanketed landscapes. By the 1930s, national parks had become home to ski jump contests, and as the century wore on, at least 10 parks featured ski lifts. The relationship between national parks and formal ski areas, however, was relatively short-lived. The NPS came to view lift-assisted skiing as incongruent with the agency’s mandate to preserve landscape and historic culture. Today, only two ski areas operate in national parks: Badger Pass in Yosemite and Hurricane Ridge in Olympic—although backcountry skiing continues to thrive in some national parks.
The Forest Service was also a key player in developing skiing for the masses. This is especially true for the Western half of the country, where the best terrain for skiing is also relatively remote, mountainous, and forested—essentially, the same land the federal government took over as forest reserves. Rope tows and ski jumps were the name of the game in skiing’s infancy. Even then, the modest forest clearing and impact from recreation associated with floating downhill on skinny sticks required special use permits from the agency. This codified a symbiotic relationship between the Forest Service and ski areas that persists to this day: Ski areas on Forest Service land depend on agency approval and management to keep on running. Those ski hills pay the Forest Service the equivalent of rent to operate on their land. Today, more than 120 ski areas on USFS land generate upwards of $40 million annually for the federal government.
But back then, the industry was in its infancy, and the Forest Service—accustomed to logging and livestock grazing as the main uses of its land—was grappling with how to deal with this rise in recreation. As the sport’s popularity increased, Europeans, often escaping fascism abroad, came to the country seeking solace—and good skiing. They brought their knowledge of the snow and skis with them.
The federal government helped create much of the infrastructure that enabled the sport to flourish. As part of the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps employed about three million young men from 1933 to 1942 to plant trees, build trails and roads, and fight fires. Much of their work took place on public land, and part of their sprawling impact was on the ski industry. They built access roads to ski areas nationwide, helping to develop Badger Pass in Yosemite and Sun Valley in Idaho, and they fed the demand for ski jumps elsewhere.
Sun Valley became home to the country’s first proper lift in late 1936. American ski resorts began modeling themselves after the glitz and glamor of European resort towns. The automobile, too, played a part in spreading skiing across the country. As cars became more common and accessible, they enabled ordinary people to travel to new and better terrain.
When young men across the country went abroad to fight during World War II, skiing’s ascension paused. But that hiatus was temporary.
1950s - 1970s: A Boom
While the war stifled some aspects of skiing’s boom, in one sense, it fueled the industry’s rise in America. That’s thanks to one particular part of the U.S. Army: the 10th Mountain Division—the Army’s only division devoted to mountain combat. The division trained in Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks. The 13,000 members of the 10th saw more than 100 days of combat. Roughly a thousand died in Italy’s mountainous, rugged terrain.
Back home, the 10th Mountain Division became pop culture icons. Life magazine featured a ski soldier on its cover. A Warner Bros documentary about the division went on a national tour, airing for tens of thousands of people. The veterans themselves brought home a new and insatiable appetite for the mountains. “After the war, the 10th Mountain Division veterans returned to the U.S. obsessed with skiing and ready to spread it to the states,” journalist Heather Hansman writes in Powder Days. “They’d seen the way skiing tied towns together in Europe—and they wanted it.”
Veterans of the division went on to start at least 62 ski areas across the country, including Vail and Aspen. As those ski areas began to sprout up across the country, the sport bloomed. In the 1950s and 60s especially, skiing entered its heyday. People had leisure time, money to spend, and cars to take them places. And since the vast majority of the American population lived in urban or suburban areas, many longed for a connection to the natural world. Between 1960 and 1968, the industry exploded; about 45 new ski areas sprung into existence each year, bringing the total from 240 to 600.
Winter sports became a part of the public consciousness as pop culture glorified the lifestyle. By the late 1950s, Skiing magazine’s readership had exploded, with more than 50,000 subscribers across the country. The 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, California, drew eyes to the sport and the athletes achieving seemingly impossible feats. In 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, James Bond strapped on skis for the first time, fleeing from bad guys while careening down steep slopes in the Alps. Skiing was everywhere people looked; it became synonymous with winter recreation.
Officially, the Forest Service shifted its focus, too. The Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act was signed in 1960, enshrining into law the agency’s “multiple use mandate.” This meant that the country’s national forests just weren’t for timber, mining, or grazing. Recreation was officially recognized as an important and legitimate use of public land alongside traditional, extractive industries.
Nationwide, the number of skiers likewise exploded. About half a million Americans went skiing every year in the mid-1950s. Roughly a decade later, that number topped three million. Ski areas across the country began to transform into something else: ski resorts. While ski areas are devoted almost entirely to the sport, ski resorts engineered a lifestyle around skiing. That included stores, bars, restaurants, and hotels. Large corporations began to buy ski resorts, searching for profit. In some ways, the foundation that would form the ski resort as we know it today began to take shape and take off around the country— especially the West.
But after the sport’s riotous ascent, skiing’s popularity more or less plateaued. That explosive growth simmered at about one percent a year. So, what happened?
Who Owns the Land?
Last year, 486 ski areas were operating in the U.S., according to data from the National Ski Areas Association. Of those, more than 120—roughly a quarter—are on Forest Service land. Those numbers are a little bit skewed, though, since Forest Service ski resorts are among the biggest and busiest in the country. Public land offers about 60 percent of the downhill skiing potential in the country.
Other types of public land are a small contributor to skiing across the country. Two ski resorts are on National Park Service land. That agency prioritizes preserving the landscape in its natural state. Because Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land tends to be less mountainous and therefore less suitable for skiing than Forest Service land, only one permitted ski area is on BLM land—Colorado’s Silverton Mountain. However, BLM land does offer ample opportunities for backcountry and cross-country skiing. It’s also worth noting that there is no downhill skiing in wilderness since ski lifts are mechanized. That said, human-powered backcountry skiing is just fine in any wilderness area.
Why so many ski resorts on Forest Service land? Much of the Forest Service’s holdings—especially in the western half of the country—make up some of the most ideal places for skiing. They’re densely forested, steep slopes located deep in the mountains. Colorado’s White River National Forest alone, for example, is home to Arapahoe Basin, Vail, Keystone, Copper, Aspen, Breckenridge, and more. Although the vast majority of public land is west of the 100th Meridian, areas like Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest and New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest are also home to busy and burgeoning resorts. Although Forest Service land is home to a significant portion of the ski industry, it’s worth noting that ski resorts only make up about 0.1% of all the Forest Service land in the country.
1970s: Regulatory Milestones (and Headaches)
Amid skiing’s boom, the country was undergoing many changes. People moved to cities, especially suburbs, and evidence of environmental degradation was everywhere. Rivers caught fire, and wildlife faced sharp declines. Skiers began to realize that resorts brought with them many unintended impacts, especially on wildlife. That impact extended beyond clearing the slopes for skiers; the new mountain traffic could damage habitat for many species, including those protected by federal law. Mountain and road development could impact, for example, elk calving grounds, winter range, and migration. Skiing was a reprieve, a solace from an industrialized world. But at the same time, many environmentalists saw the rise of skiing as a threat to the nature many skiers sought to revel in.
The country responded strongly to the destruction. The largest suite of environmental laws passed to date came in the 1970s under Republican Richard Nixon. Cynics say the measures were meant to distract from Watergate and the Vietnam War. But the public had a genuine appetite for environmental reform.
A few of those laws had huge impacts on ski resorts: Namely, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act. NEPA, in particular, would change the game for ski resort approval. The policy dictates that proposed resorts on federal land undergo environmental review. This includes time for public comment and digging into what all aspects of a ski development would mean for land, water, and wildlife. For years, there were multiple permits to wrangle as well as convoluted and bureaucratic steps to keep things on track. Fundamentally, this process is crucial to safeguard what many skiers value about the mountains, but it can also take years.
Over time, NEPA and our other bedrock environmental laws became two things at once: a weapon wielded by environmentalists to sue and delay or even stop projects in their tracks, and one of our only backstops against unchecked development and environmental degradation. However you look at it, one impact is tough to dispute: The approval and construction of new ski areas slowed to a crawl.
One 1980 Forest Service report saw the writing on the wall: “1969 marked the leveling out of the rapid growth of ski facilities. The year the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) went into effect was also 1969. This single piece of legislation heralded a new era in the U.S., which has had a lasting impact on ski area development in the country. The environmental consciousness that has grown over the last ten years has placed new ski area construction in limbo all over the West. Questions are being asked, the answers to which often signal the demise of a new area proposal.”
To be clear, the reasons for the industry’s decline were not only related to environmental legislation. But the uncertainty and length of NEPA analysis certainly made investors hesitant. Climate change plays a big role, too. Some areas simply stopped getting enough snow to support viable resorts. Broader economic changes favored the profitability of big resorts over smaller, independent operators. This made it harder for smaller players to keep their doors open and easier for big, corporate players to acquire new property.
Skiing continues to occupy an interesting place in environmental discourse. While conservationists are quick to decry logging, drilling, and grazing, recreation has also had a negative impact. Journalist Hal Clifford doesn’t pull any punches in his assessment of this dynamic: “National environmental groups have been slow to grapple with the implications of this new, virulent ski-resort development perhaps because many members of those groups are skiers, just as they are mountain bikers, hikers, kayakers, rock climbers, and peak baggers. As logging and grazing on public lands diminishes, recreation is growing to the point where it has the most significant impact on our public lands… It is easy for an environmental group to point to someone else—a logging company, a mining firm, or a ski resort—and charge that they are the problem. It is much harder to look in the mirror and say, We are the problem.”
Climate Change
Already, climate change is taking its toll on ski resorts the world over. In many ways, ski resorts are on the front lines of climate impacts. Low snowpack, a late start and early end to the season, and early spring or even mid-winter rains aren’t uncommon across the country. It’s not just snow, either: Driven by climate change, increasingly large and severe wildfires burn in or close to or through ski resorts.
A number of studies have analyzed snowpacks all over the country and used models to predict what could happen next based on how much the country and the world emit. Here’s what the data suggests so far, based on several peer-reviewed studies: Between 2000 and 2019, climate change cost ski areas in the U.S. about $5 billion. By the 2050s, warming weather will cost resorts about $1 billion every single year. At nearly 250 winter recreation sites across the country, the season could decrease by about half by the 2050s. Thirty years after that, they’d see 80 percent shorter seasons than today. Ski seasons at resorts have already shrunk by five to seven days compared to the 1960s and 70s. Depending on how much we keep emitting, they could be shortened by anywhere from two to eight weeks by the 2050s. Lower-elevation ski areas will feel the impacts first and most acutely, but even the highest resorts in the Rockies aren’t immune.
On the ground, it’s not hard to see these impacts playing out in real time. Just last year, Montana’s Teton Pass Resort ski area didn’t open at all. The country’s only summer-only ski area, on the famed and scenic Beartooth Highway, also in Montana, didn’t open when things turned warmer. Both closures were due to a lack of snow.
Ski areas are increasingly relying on making artificial snow to compensate. However, warming temps impact snowmaking, too, and one study estimated that snowmaking could consume about 80 percent more water in the future to accommodate the need. At the same time, the power required to generate snow machines is itself a major ski resort contributor to carbon emissions. So, some ski resorts’ climate resiliency efforts will themselves contribute to a warming climate.
Other efforts to bolster snowpack seem straight out of science fiction. A number of the huge resorts in Colorado, for example, are attempting “cloud seeding,” which means shooting silver iodide high into the sky, where it can promote more snowfall. As winters continue to warm, more and more resorts are jumping on the cloud-seeding bandwagon.
1980s - Today: Plateau and Consolidation
By the 1980s, the number of skiers in the country more or less leveled off. Instead of the continuous, year-after-year growth seen in decades past, resort visitors hovered around 50 million per year for about the next two decades. However, although overall numbers showed a somewhat static population of skiers, things looked different in specific regions. Namely, more skiers concentrated in certain areas—especially the big resorts out West.
To differentiate themselves, ski resorts began searching out faster, better lifts and more amenities. They also realized the immense economic value of property near the resort itself. Just like theaters make more money selling drinks and snacks than movie tickets, today, lift ticket profits are just scratching the surface of ski resort revenue. Real estate and development became a larger profit generator than skiing for many corporate resort owners. Big resorts bought out smaller resorts, which often couldn’t compete. Hal Clifford, a journalist and vocal critic of the corporate takeover of the ski industry, described the consolidation of ski resorts as a result of the “dubious premise that to prosper in the modern ski industry, one must get big or get out.”
As the industry consolidated and expanded, the animosity between some environmentalists and ski resorts came to a head. In 1998, Vail had proposed a roughly 885-acre expansion into the Two Elks drainage. The expansion quickly spurred environmental backlash: the area was prime elk-calving country, it supplied clean water for the town of Minturn, and, many groups argued, it provided habitat for the Canada lynx. No lynx had been sighted there since the 1970s, and conservation groups had been through a years-long back-and-forth over whether the species warranted Endangered Species Act protections. There were protests, public comments, and lawsuits over the expansion. Then, all sides were pointing fingers at the Forest Service, each alleging that the federal agency was in cahoots with the enemy.
Before sunrise one October morning, arsonists set six buildings in Vail ablaze, including the Two Elks Lodge. The act created $12 million in damages and remains the most destructive act of eco-terrorism ever committed in America. A radical environmental group, the Earth Liberation Front, took credit for the fires. “Putting profits ahead of Colorado’s wildlife will not be tolerated,” the group wrote in an email. “This action is just a warning. We will be back if this greedy corporation continues to trespass into wild and unroaded areas.”
In many ways, the act of eco-sabotage had the opposite effect. As images of the burning lodge made nightly news all over the country, the very corporation the activists sought to bring to its knees became the victim in the public’s eye—not the enemy. Vail’s expansion, eventually known as Blue Sky Basin, was completed in 2000. The business of big ski resorts continued to boom.
By 2002, when Clifford published his treatise on the trajectory of snowsports in the U.S., Downhill Slide: Why the Corporate Ski Industry is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns, and the Environment, three corporations ran the show: Vail, Intrawest, and American Skiing Company. More than two decades later, that trend hasn’t slowed. If anything, the industry has become more consolidated. Two companies are in charge today: Vail and Alterra. Think of any big-name resort and one of the two companies is likely at least a partial owner: Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, Vail, Park City, Keystone, or dozens more. Combined, Vail and Alterra resorts account for more than half of all revenue at all ski resorts in the country.
In short, the economic climate favored the biggest resorts that could diversify their income by capitalizing on ballooning real estate investments and offering plush extras along with skiing. According to one study, about 59 percent of ski resorts in North America have shut down since their heyday in the late 60s. However, things aren’t quite as dismal as that statistic makes things sound: There are nearly 500 ski areas in the U.S., and that number has stayed relatively static over the last several years.
While many skiers rejoice in the high-speed lifts and gorgeous scenery, there were real downsides to skiing’s corporate takeover. Ski towns lost their character. The people who worked at the resorts and made skiing possible in the first place were priced out of living nearby. Wildlife populations and freshwater supplies suffered in some areas.
Still, more people than ever before are skiing today. The growth isn’t drastic, but it is visible. Three of the four busiest years on record at ski resorts have occurred over the last three ski seasons. The 2022-23 winter set an all-time high for the number of skier visits at more than 65 million.
Although ski areas comprise less than one percent of Forest Service land, their overall economic impact is huge. In a 2017 speech, former Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell made a striking announcement. He said that in 2016, Forest Service fees from ski resorts generated more capital than ever before: $45 million. “That’s more revenue than any other activity on the National Forest System—more than timber and all other recreation special uses combined.” From an economic perspective, skiing is the largest single use on the country’s Forest Service land.
More than 120 resorts nationwide operate partly or entirely on public land. Rents generated from resorts continue to produce more than $40 million every year for the U.S. Treasury. Assessing the growth of the ski industry in Colorado, in particular, historian Michael W. Childers poses a fascinating question about the fraught relationship between public land and ski resorts: “[W]hat constitutes the greatest good when it comes to public lands, and moreover, is it even possible for a profit-driven model of land management to be successful when the goal is to provide access for all?”
Legislative Fixes
For decades, Congress and the Forest Service have worked to fix and streamline the permit and fee system. Things get weedy fast in federal bureaucracy, but over the years, fixes have reduced the number of permits resorts need to operate, implemented a sliding scale for fees based on the number of visitors a resort takes in, waived NEPA analysis for certain projects in line with ski resorts’ preexisting “master plans,” and aimed to streamline the environmental analysis process as a whole. By most measures, none of these fixes have had much success in offering more opportunities for recreationists.
The fundamental issues are: How can the NEPA process be streamlined such that it isn’t as time-intensive and costly while still providing a backstop for damaging projects and suggesting other ways forward? And, how can recreationists and ski area developers better fund the Forest Service’s work?
In 2020, former Forest Service chief Vicki Christiansen said in a speech that the agency is facing challenges every bit as daunting as the ski industry. “Our budgets do not allow us to meet the demand for the services we provide, and our current administrative capacity does not fully support ski area permit administration,” she said.
Proposed federal legislation has taken steps to try to make things better. The Ski Area Fee Retention Act, first proposed in 2018, would allow the Forest Service to devote some of its rent fees—tens of millions of dollars every year—for permit administration and avalanche information. Right now, that money goes to the U.S. Treasury rather than back to the Forest Service. Watchdog groups claimed the bill would create a clear conflict of interest since Forest Service administrators would get direct funding from the resorts whose permits they were evaluating.
Another bill, the Ski Hill Resources for Economic Development Act (SHRED), was introduced in both 2021 and 2023. It would allow the Forest Service to retain a certain amount of the fees it collects from ski resorts. Instead of going just to administrators, the funding would go to slightly broader needs for winter recreation. An additional portion of the funding would be reserved for the Forest Service, making a dent in the agency’s multi-billion dollar backlog and overall budget shortfalls.
So far, neither bill has passed. The systems through which ski resorts are permitted and resort fees funnel to the government have seen only modest changes since they were first introduced.
Ikon and Epic: The Passes That Changed Everything
For decades, ski pass options in America were simple and intuitive. Skiers could buy a day pass for a resort, and if they planned to go there frequently, they could save some money and buy a season pass. In 2008, Vail introduced the Epic Pass, which upended this age-old system of purchasing.
Instead of one pass for one resort, the Epic Pass allowed skiers to go to more or less any resort within Vail’s sprawling network—often for a fee cheaper than a season pass at a single resort. As the corporation consolidated ownership of resorts across the country, skiers had an increasing number of options. Today, Vail owns more than 40 resorts. There were tiers and limitations, of course. But as a whole, skiers who coughed up the cash for a pass could travel the state, region, country, or even the world in search of fresh powder.
That first year, an Epic pass ran skiers only about $579. They sold around 59,000 passes. Word spread throughout the skiing public over the ensuing years, and the pass took off. By 2014, annual sales hit half a million. By the 2023-24 season, 2.4 million people bought Epic passes.
A decade later, other resort operators saw the promise of the all-resorts-in-one pass. The industry had consolidated enough that somebody else could offer it, too. There are now two main players in the ski resort game: Along with Vail, Colorado-based Alterra Mountain Company rose to prominence. Alterra’s Ikon Pass debuted in 2018 and took off with a similar rocket-like trajectory as the Epic.
Today, the Epic and Ikon passes have given skiers what one writer calls a set of choices akin to “Pepsi or Coke.” For the 2024-25 season, Epic and Ikon passes ran around $1000 and $1500, respectively.
Many blame the Epic and Ikon passes for overwhelming crowds, lift lines, and full parking lots at major resorts—especially on weekends and powder days. Another unhappy byproduct is higher-priced single-day tickets—$300 for a day of skiing isn’t uncommon at the biggest resorts. Those who live close to resorts and plan to ski often every winter can save a load of cash with these passes. But those who can only get out once or twice a year or are just getting into the sport may face prohibitively expensive ticket prices.
Skiing and Public Lands Today: Where Do We Go Next?
Recreation is more popular than ever on our public land. But our land management agencies, and particularly the Forest Service, still haven’t quite figured out how to cope with all the skiers.
In many ways, skiing’s spread today mirrors what the industry has seen for decades: longer lift lines, increasingly expensive lift tickets, and, despite the fact that skiing’s growth has slowed, mounting crowds on the slopes. The resort industry continues to consolidate. There are patrol strikes demanding higher wages. Citing unfair land swamps and other handouts, critics continue to claim that the Forest Service is in unfair cahoots with the ski industry. Climate change is shortening seasons and decreasing snowpack. And while sustainability efforts are ramping up at independent and corporate resorts alike, critics allege many of those initiatives amount to little more than greenwashing.
The National Association of Ski Areas stated that the expansion of ski areas is where we’re most likely to see movement in the years ahead within a stagnant regulatory environment. Most parties seem to agree. But given the lengthy permit system, environmental concerns, and risk of investments, we’re unlikely to enter a second golden era of new resorts. Nor should we, necessarily. But it’s also clear that the trajectory of increasing corporatization and consolidation isn’t sustainable. So what do we do? What’s next for the ski industry?
If you look closely enough, things are changing. This winter, Epic Passes saw their first decline in sales in their history. Amid the David and Goliath struggle to persist in the face of Vail, Alterra, and the other large corporate owners, dozens of independent ski resorts have managed to stay open.
It’s worth remembering that large, corporate resorts are here to stay, and they play a big role in offering ski opportunities to the public. But those resorts aren’t the only option in town. Montana’s Bridger Bowl, Vermont’s Cochran, New Hampshire’s Whaleback, and Idaho’s Bogus Basin are all run by nonprofits. Whaleback’s owners, in particular, organized to purchase the mountain after it shut its doors back in 2013. Mad River Glen in Vermont is owned by a co-op. Showdown in Montana recently passed ownership from father to daughter.
The story of independent ski resorts is less visible than the story of corporate ownership. It’s also a story that’s still evolving. The Indy Pass was launched in 2019 as an alternative to the Ikon and Epic. For $350, purchasers get two free days at more than 230 independently operated resorts across the country. It doesn’t offer the same amenities or sheer abundance of skiing as its corporate brethren. But, like independent resorts themselves, it’s scrappy. It incentivizes purchasers to travel farther afield, searching out snow in new ski areas in their region or across the country.
As I write this, Oregon's Mount Bachelor ski resort is up for sale. When word got out about a pending change in ownership, a couple of snowboarders in the area had a wild idea: Maybe they—meaning the local community as a whole—could take it back. They spearheaded a local fundraising goal, aiming to wrangle as much as $200 million to buy the resort from Park City-based Powdr, the current owner. That price would include the existing lifts and infrastructure and the Forest Service special use permit to keep operating.
This isn’t necessarily just a one-off. The town of Nederland, Colorado, too, is organizing to buy Eldora (also from Powdr). And since the pandemic, the National Ski Areas Association reports a 10 percent increase in visits to independent ski areas. There’s a renewed hunger to be off the beaten path and for adventure in the industry. The quirk, spirit, and community of independent operators can be a reprieve from the sometimes sterile feel of the major resorts. The communal quest to preserve Mount Bachelor attests to the burgeoning desire—not just in Oregon but all over ski country—for something different and new.
The coalition of locals hellbent on preserving the character of the ski area officially dubbed themselves as Mt. Bachelor Community, Inc. They plan to submit a formal bid right around their original $200 million goal. But they also suspect they might be up against industry juggernauts, including Vail.
“What will Mount Bachelor become? And for whom?” Journalist John Branch wrote in a recent feature about the initiative for The New York Times. The answer to that question could be a lens into what’s next for the industry as a whole.
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