MOVING AND SHAKING IN THE MEDIA WORLD
Ski Press calls it quits in the U.S. and scales back in Canada. Skiing magazine shrinks to a couple of print editions and a passel of online offerings. And Vail Resorts expands into media ownership by purchasing popular web portal OnTheSnow.com. It may be the off-season for winter sports, but there’s been an awful lot happening in the consumer media world.

For resorts, VR’s purchase of OnTheSnow.com was the biggest news. This portal has become extremely valuable as a means of reaching 250,000 or so readers with last-minute deals. While there has been much hand-wringing over editorial independence, we expect editor Craig Altschul to resist efforts, if any, to pressure him. He’s a frank and independent cuss, as many readers doubtless know. This is the guy, after all, who used to kick resorts and suppliers in the shins in the “best/worst advertising” issue of “The Ski Industry Letter.” He and I. William Berry were charging resorts (among others) several hundred dollars for the newsletter even as they terrorized the ski world with their independent reporting. The fact that Altschul was, back in the early 1980s, marketing and PR director of Vail Associates, is no reason to expect he’ll favor VR resorts now.

No, the bigger issue for most resorts is whether OnTheSnow will keep its audience, and therefore remain the excellent vehicle it has been. We suspect that VR paid millions to own it, and won’t intentionally ruin that investment. But that depends on how effective the site remains for all the areas that have contributed to its success. Like it or not, there’s nothing to do but wait and see.

The changes at Skiing and Ski Press have more immediate effects. Ski Press founder Jean-Marc Blais was forced out, the U.S. edition has disappeared, and new management put in place. The editor of the Canadian edition is Patrick Wells, a longtime instructor and coach who had most recently served as director of services for the ski school, rental and repair shop and boutique at Mont La Réserve, Quebec. Charles Duhamel is now president (we assume that’s like publisher). Ski Press will have 80,000 distribution.

Faced with drastically falling ad revenues, Skiing reduced its frequency (we use the term loosely) from six to two print issues, but will offer numerous digital issues and an expanded suite of online services. The plan at press time was a bit hazy, full of “might” and “could” for an eclectic set of interactive services ranging from bootfitting advice to a guide to skidom’s best parties. Staff saw big changes coming, and four members left before the news came—among them editor-in-chief Jake Bogoch.

Watch for more media moves, too. The nascent High Country Media (HCM), a partner with SnoCountry Mountain Reports in SnoCountry.com, is exploring ways to take advantage of the angst surrounding VR’s purchase of OnTheSnow (OTS). Time will tell if HCM and SnoCountry can step up their efforts to provide a serious alternative to OTS. Meanwhile, HCM continues to push its Mountain Sports + Living and mtnaccess.com club, but is now putting its emphasis on the former—it discovered last year that skiers and riders still understand magazines better than benefit clubs.


PEACE THROUGH SKIING
Warren Miller likes to say that “if everyone skied, there would be no wars.” Russia may test that theory by building five world-class ski resorts in the North Caucasus, home of the wayward Chechen republic and other upstarts, by 2020. One resort will be on Europe’s highest peak, Mt. Elbrus. The price of peace: about $15 billion.

The region already has good airports and infrastructure, and the government plans to upgrade roads as well. Wealthy Russian investors as well as large financial companies from the Mideast, Europe, and the U.S. will cover most of the costs. About a third of the total investment will go toward hotels; eventual visitation is estimated at 3.5 million to 5 million annually for the resorts collectively.

The resorts could face an uphill battle, since the region is subject to near-daily insurgent attacks. But the Kremlin sees the resorts as an opportunity to pump money into the local economy and improve the lives of locals—thereby discouraging separatism and the accompanying violence. The resorts could generate 160,000 jobs when completed, the government projects, and that could appease a lot of erstwhile guerrillas.

Speaking of separatists, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has said that he would like to build ski resorts, too, aimed at attracting both Russian and foreign tourists. He said the resorts could compete with the best of Europe and, we imagine, the other North Caucasus resorts as well. With luck, perhaps the two groups will get along as well as, say, Colorado and Utah.


SOLAR POWERED LIFTS
The folks at PlanetSKI tell us that the number of ski lifts that run 100 percent on solar power has recently doubled, from 1 to 2. The first was a surface lift in Westendorf in Austria, installed in 2008, and the second will be a chair in Tenna, Switzerland, where about 1,000 locals use the hill. It’s scheduled to open in December.

The chairlift will operate even on overcast days. The solar panels are on the lift itself, and will track the sun moves across the sky. The panels will generate 90,000 kW, more than enough to power the lift according to the manufacturers. Excess energy will be sold to the Austrian National Grid.


WASTING AWAY AT GREAT DIVIDE
Skiers and riders alike flock to the mountain in part because they are pristine, fresh-air escapes from the smog, pollution, and general nastiness of urban areas. So it’s probably a good thing that most don’t know the dirty secret of mining communities: the mountains are sometimes polluted, too. There was a Superfund site in Aspen back in the 1980s, after all (it was cleaned up and delisted in the late 1990s).

Add Great Divide Ski Area in Montana to the unlikely list. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will spend the next three summers clearing contaminated mining waste from Great Divide’s slopes above the new base lodge. Not to worry, say DEQ officials—the arsenic, lead and cadmium, along with other heavy metals don't pose a health hazard to skiers and snowboarders visiting the area. They are more a threat to nearby streams. Whatever—we’ll still breathe easier once the 40,000 cubic yards of material are safely contained in a repository DEQ is constructing on BLM land nearby.


IS SKIING SAFER THAN GARDENING?
Sports, even “risk” sports like skiing and riding, are safer than you might think, relatively speaking. London’s Daily Mail reported last spring that, in Britain anyway, more people are hurt gardening than skiing—four times more, in fact. One in 10 Brits injure themselves while gardening. Even do-it-yourselfers hurt themselves twice as frequently as downhillers. The DIY injury rate is also higher than that for rock climbing and horseback riding. We’re not sure what this all means, but we hope British skiers and riders stay away from hoes, rakes, and hammers this summer as they prepare for the coming winter.


FOREST SERVICE DOUSES C.B. SMOKE SHACKS
The Forest Service really doesn’t want to see any sort of real estate development at Crested Butte, it seems. Not only is the Forest Service against Crested Butte’s proposed Snodgrass expansion (see “Industry Reports,” page 14), but rangers have focused on rooting out and removing marijuana "smoke shacks" cloistered in the forest within the resort’s boundaries. Rangers have been prosecuting the builders and maintainers of the structures to discourage the shacks’ return. Last December, two Western State College students were fined $850 each for their shack, and were banned from Crested Butte as a result. Smoke shacks are widely rumored to exist at several other resorts, but clearly, the Forest Service has C.B. on its radar.


SUMMER ZIPS ALONG
Winter resorts and speed go hand in hand, but now summer activities at winter resorts are revving up, too. New ziplines are going in at several Eastern resorts this summer, including Hunter Mountain (with one zipline that’s 3,000 feet long), Loon Mountain, Camelback, and Jiminy Peak (as part of its new Aerial Adventure Park). Many of these are incorporated into canopy tours—as are the ziplines at Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands, which began operations last winter. Squaw Valley has added a zipline as part of its summer activities, too. But ziplines aren’t the only speed rides areas are adopting. Mountain coasters continue to multiply as well, with new rides going in this summer at Blue Mountain (which also has plans for a zipline) and Okemo.

Rumor has it that this explosion of interest has spurred SAM magazine to develop a Summer Ops Camp (for details, see page 45).