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ski business

Most Expensive Season Passes

December 23rd, 2009 by snowman

I live near Jackson Hole and every year I toy with the idea of buying a season pass there, but I balk at its price tag, this year it is $1970. If I took advantage of its summer price discount I’d pay only $1675. If I skied 50 days I’d end up paying about $33 [...]

Bad News for the Luxury Second Home Market

December 19th, 2009 by snowman

On Thursday Bloomberg (via Buisiness Week) reported homeowners with $1 million plus mortgages are defaulting at about double the rate of other U.S. homeowners. In September payments on about 12% of mortgages over $1 million were 90 dyas or more late.
Over the past year we’ve seen many luxury ski resort developments based on a real [...]

Copenhagen, and Is it a Hoax?

December 17th, 2009 by snowman

I wonder how many people representing the various sectors of the ski industry are in Copenhagen? Current trends in climate change certainly don’t look good for the ski industry, do they? Yeah, I know, compared to the health insurance industry, or the banking industry, the ski industry is pretty small potatoes, so when its future [...]

There Goes the Neighborhood?

May 18th, 2009 by snowman

The court battle for the ownership of the Yellowstone Club reached its denouement today and Sam Byrne and his Cross Harbor crew emerged as the victors according to New West’s report in the court’s decision. Like many skier observers, I’ve been watching this imbroglio with bemusement, not really caring much about who would be pronounced [...]

Grand Targhee Wins Golden Eagle Award

May 16th, 2009 by snowman

Congrats to my wonderful local ski hill, Grand Targhee, for winning the 2009 Golden Eagle Award for Overall Environmental Excellence by a ski resort at the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) National Convention and Tradeshow going on in Florida. As I noted last month, Grand Targhee became the “first organization in North America” to have [...]

Ridiculous Skis, and Some That Are Not

May 3rd, 2009 by snowman

Important update- please read the update I just placed at the end of this post. It seems the Carradan Ski company may be less than it appears to be.
I first read about Carradan Skis last year, rolled my eyes at skis with price tags beyond $10,000.00, and went on about my business enjoying the magical [...]

Unwarming Winter

April 28th, 2009 by snowman

A couple of days ago I posted the latest NASA map showing all the areas on the Earth’s surface that were either warmer than normal or cooler than normal in March 09 and it was a depressing map for skiers to look at with warming areas covering far more of the Earth than cooling areas.
We [...]

Flint Michigan

April 23rd, 2009 by snowman

What might Flint, Michigan have to do with the future of skiing? Maybe a report on the radio yesterday about Flint’s efforts to become a smaller city will prove to be predictive of a not to distant in the future happening in the world of some ski resort communities.
What is Flint trying to do? The [...]

Skier Behavior (Wonkish)

April 11th, 2009 by snowman

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 [...]

The Donald and the Yellowstone Club

April 6th, 2009 by snowman

Robert Frank is reporting that Donald Trump is considering bidding on the Yellowstone Club next month, butTrump claims to be skeptical about the viability of the whole concept of the club. According to Frank, the Donald is worried because  the business of a private golf and ski resort, sustained by land sales and service profits, [...]