Winter isn’t done with us yet. The powder keeps falling here in the Tetons. Yesterday the mountains received another 16″ new snow and more is predicted for today and tonight.
So how did this winter turn out for powder skiers? Pretty good, I’d say- especially good if you ski Alta and Snowbird! Alta is reporting 676″ [...]
With my apologies to Paul Krugman for the low level of wonkishness this post will provide, I thought I’d provide one of his warnings in the headline.
When I say skier behavior to my friends they immediately think of liftline misbehavior, reckless actions on the slopes and foolishness in the bar. What does that say about [...]
It looks like it’s been a tough year for ski instructors and real estate agents in ski towns. We all know about the piling up of inventories of unsold properties across ski country and I’d heard anecdotal reports of a fall off in ski lessons. At last week’s Mountain Travel Symposium, an annual affair where [...]
Yesterday I had to drop in to a local building supplier’s yard to get something for a project I’ve been avoiding since December’s first snows. Ten days into official Spring, everything in the yard was still covered with several inches of snow from the weekend’s storms. One of the employees there, a person I know [...]
The Rossignol Group (Rossignol, Dynastar Look and Lange) announce plans to layoff 30% of its workforce (mostly in Europe) citing declining sales and excess inventory. They hope to return to profitability in two years. Their Dynastar brand alone, has 290,000 pairs of unsold skis! (Which they scrapped most of ????- What a waste!) Ski retailers [...]
One of the great things about skiing is the high level of concentration needed to actually ski. Most people can’t think of anything while skiing except keeping their balance, reading the snow, deciding where to turn next, and making their body do the complex skills needed to successfully turn their skis. Even the thought of [...]
The economic turbulence continues to impact the ski business. According an Associated Press report on the Denver post website Vail Resorts today announced it was cutting employee wages by up to 10% starting April 2 for non seasonal workers. This winter’s seasonal workers will not be affected. Executives will face the 10% cut and the [...]
The financial woes impacting the credit markets have claimed a major ski resort as a new victum. Hailed as the first new major ski resort in years when it opened a couple of years ago, Tamarack Resort will close this Thursday, according to the IdahoStatesman.com. A few months ago the resort sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy [...]
Earlier this month I blogged about the growing trend of ski resorts creating expensive, exclusive private membership clubs to coddle (and profit handsomely from) the wealthy. I groused about these clubs because the resorts give these members special privileges to get on the ski lifts before the rest of us. Just yesterday I overheard a [...]
Now that W is on permanent vacation, I guess NASA’s climate scientists are no longer under house arrest, so we can mine some interesting (disturbing?) climate data on NASA’s website. If you thought we were having a real winter back in January, check out this NASA map of the average global temperatures for January 2009, [...]
