Money & Mountains

New Western Ski Resorts: Boon or Bane?

By Courtney Lowery, 2-24-05

Near the blue-collar town of Lolo, Mont., rancher Tom Maclay has already cut ski runs into the top of his 3,000 acre ranch. He’s hoping to get Forest Service approval to use adjacent federal land to build a ski hill with the largest vertical drop in North America – accompanied, of course, by at least 2,000 homes. (See our full story in the Missoula blog).

From British Columbia to southern Colorado, new ski resorts are blooming and old ones are expanding – not because more people are skiing, but because wealthy, aging Baby Boomers are increasingly looking for amenity-rich second homes.

This year marked the opening Tamarack Resort in Idaho and Moonlight Basin in Montana – the first new destination resorts in the West in 20 years. At Wolf Creek Pass in Southern Colorado, “Red� McCombs, the owner of the Minnesota Vikings and the co-founder of Clear Channel Communications Inc., is aiming to develop a mega-resort, complete with 2,200 housing units atop Wolf Creek Pass. North of the border, the proposed $350 million Jumbo Glacier in Invermere B.C., which could be up and running by 2007 should the Canadian Government approve its master plan by the end of the year. And then there is the proposed Bitterroot Resort in Lolo, south of Missoula.

“There is not a real need for these ski areas,� says Ed Ryberg, the winter sports program coordinator for the Forest Service. “What you’re seeing is a demographic shift.�

People are hitting their peak earnings and are ready to start taking their ski vacations again, Ryberg says.

“A ski area is just a nice amenity as a backdrop to your real estate,� Ryberg says.

While ski area expansions in the ’80s and ’90s focused on extreme terrain, the new surge is heavy on intermediate slopes for the baby boomers and their children.

“It’s an opportunity that wasn’t here 30 years ago,� says David Blair, the spokesman for Maclay’s proposed Bitterroot Resort.

Thirty years ago, it would have been easier to build a ski resort, at least on public land. But the National Environmental Policy Act, slowing growth in the ski business, and increasing opposition to using public lands for private gain have dramatically slowed ski resort development in the National Forests. In the last 10 years there has been only one ski hill built on Forest Service land - Blacktail Mountain near Lakeside, Mont., a small resort with three chairlifts and 1,000 acres of terrain.

Through the NEPA process, a company has to show financial viability and environmental compliance, and it has to show a need for more skiing or recreation in the area to prove that a ski area would be the best use for the land. The process does not demand evidence of a need for more second homes for out-of-state visitors.

“It’s not part of our mandate to look at real estate,� Ryberg says. “These things can be financially feasible, but there’s no need there. It’s going to be difficult to demonstrate that there is a need for more skiing.�

Still, given the current White House Administration’s ideas on how to manage public lands and the storied power of the ski industry, people in the Missoula and Bitterroot Valleys aren’t ready to let a proposal even bud without a fight.

“Take this threat as real,� former Lolo Forest Supervisor Orville Daniels told a room of Bitterroot Resort opponents last week. “Some of the most powerful forces working on the National Forests are ski areas … even more than the timber industry, more than the mining industry.�

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