SAM Magazine--Ludlow, Vt., Jan. 8, 2004--Tim and Diane Mueller, owners of Triple Peaks, LLC have entered into a Definitive Purchase and Sale Agreement to buy Crested Butte Ski Resort from the Callaway and Walton families, owners of Crested Butte Mountain Ski Resort, LLC and it subsidiaries. The Muellers signed a Letter of Intent for the purchase...

SAM Magazine--Bozeman, Mont., January 2, 2004--The ownership of the summit of the 11,166-foot Lone Peak, which is home to Big Sky, the Yellowstone Mountain Club and the new Moonlight Basin, is the subject of what is to become a court battle. According to the Billings Gazette, Tim Blixseth, owner of the Yellowstone Club, has filed suit against th...

The East decidedly had it the hardest during Christmas week, but the news gets better out West. Rain on Christmas Eve for southern New England, then temperatures that soared into the 50s and 60s over Christmas and the following weekend, made for a less-than-stellar holiday week for many ski areas in the Northeast. At Ski Bradford, just north of ...

SAM Magazine--Storrs, Ct., December 29, 2003--Marvin W. Kottke, 80, died of a sudden massive stroke on December 26, 2003. Kottke's work in the ski industry is well known after 14 years of preparing the Kottke End of Season Report for the National Ski Areas Association. Though the report has been assembled by RRC Associates since 1994, it still bear...

SAM Magazine--Vail, Colo., Dec. 24, 2003--Vail Resorts and Intrawest have reached an "amicable agreement" to divide the remaining developable assets, liquidate remaining partnership inventory, and ultimately to dissolve their Keystone development partnership. The partnership stems from Vail Resorts' purchase of Keystone in the mid-1990s, at which t...

SAM Magazine--Vail, Colo., Dec. 17, 2003--A woman and her deceased husband's family won a $17.5 million award yesterday stemming from carbon monoxide poisoning at Vail Resorts' Snake River Lodge and Spa in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2001. The award, the largest personal injury award ever in Wyoming, included compensatory but no punitive damages. Pla...

SAM Magazine--Vail, Colo., December 16, 2004--Vail Resorts, Inc., announced its first quarter numbers last week for the fiscal year 2004 (the quarter ended on October 31, 2003) and the news was mixed. It seems expenses outweighed revenue in quite a few areas, though the company claims it is making headway and that the results were better than antic...

SAM Magazine--Ligonier, Pa., December 16, 2004--A month ago, the owner of Laurel Mountain Ski Resort, George Mowl, announced that he had found a buyer in HomeSpan Financial Group. However, the sale was delayed last week by the untimely death of the president of HomeSpan, John Jones. Both parties claim that the sale will still go through but, in ...

SAM Magazine--Park City, Utah, December 10, 2003--This reporter must first confess that she has absolutely no background in financial matters. So, when American Skiing Company released its first quarter figures today with a caveat about the company adopting Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 150, "Accounting for Certain Financial Instr...

SIN--12/10/03--SIA posted its Retail Audit for the August-October quarter on Tuesday, and it shows a 3.9% sales increase over the same quarter in 2002, based on cash register results at 1085 stores. Ý Specialty stores did very well, doubling sales of ski-and-binding "systems" (thanks largely to a 13% drop in average price) and a 73% rise in ...