Our ski area just issued a press release, saying they won't open next year.
Now that's a sack of rocks! Sorry to hear.
It has been so much fun to watch your kids grow up there over the years (not to mention a certain patrol volunteer). Crossing my fingers for all of you.
We'll be fine. There's another area the same distance in the opposite direction that is just reopened this year after about 15 years out of business. It'll be fine to go patrol there, too, and probably will be welcomed by the family since we rarely go anyplace new. The "big hill" at Red Lodge is another option but I don't want to patrol there. Maybe they'll invite us but they've always been pretty snooty so they'll make us grovel. Actually, the leadership is fine. It's the rank & file who have always had an ego problem. Altho we did some training together this fall at a session that they usually run as a closed course... and our crew were more prepared so maybe they got some humility? Nah. ;-)
Anyway. Our patrol director is thinking some operations funding might magically appear. Maybe he knows something the rest of us don't, yet.
Our ski area just issued a press release, saying they won't open next year.
Now that's a sack of rocks! Sorry to hear.
It has been so much fun to watch your kids grow up there over the years (not to mention a certain patrol volunteer). Crossing my fingers for all of you.
Our ski area just issued a press release, saying they won't open next year.
Why?
The population just isn't enough to support it. There's more to do in winter now, and better roads to go do it! A run of below-average snowfall years (at least during skiable monthsâwe get a ton of snow in late April & May, after the areas close) shortens the season (opened Dec. 19 this year) and even though this nonprofit ski hill (bought by a local oilman and donated to a Foundation) was inexpensive, skiing is a spendy sport... and if you're going to spend a couple hundred per year, you might be inclined to spend it at Red Lodge, a bigger, snowier mountain just 50 miles in the other direction.
EDIT Our patrol director thinks the "that's it, we're done" tone of the press release was deliberate, to shock other donors into stepping up. The oilman has put literally millions into the place and it still always comes up a quarter million in the red each year. About 60% of revenue is sales, the rest is community donations (including the oil money). We need a little more marketing know-how and budget and maybe some cooperation from the weather would help. But anyway our director thinks *something* will happen that gets the area open again next year. There are several people in the area who're richer'n Kanye, plus Kanye. Maybe one or two of them will decide to chip in.
I think it was Stephen Colbert who commented that the Mueller investigation was like Watergate for stupid people. Trump with his tantrums and placards certainly is playing his part.
