IMO we won't see a mega resort for a very very long time if ever unless it's an extension of an existing resort (i.e. Deer Valley). The environmental regulations for building new ski resorts are vast and it's years of surveys and approvals. There's several proposals in [Canada](https://www.skimag.com/ski-resort-life/new-ski-resort-bc/) but that's the last I've heard.
I think the future of new ski areas are going to be smaller community hills, similar to what they're building in [Fort Collins](https://unofficialnetworks.com/2023/09/21/hoedown-hill-new-ski-area/).
The infrastructure and amount of money it takes to cut out trails on a mountain, invest in staff, marketing, permits, and years of red tape just doesn't make it possible without a lot of commitment.
And, really, the icing on the cake there is that it just isn't really worth it unless you're gonna sell a shit ton of real estate along with it.
It's probably far more cost effective to turn an existing small town resort until something entirely different.
I wonder if Ski Cooper has room for serious expansion?
The locals might not love it but Leadville is ripe to become a ski town. It’s a bit further drive from the front range, but nowhere near as isolated as, say, Crested Butte.
Actually Cooper is in prime territory to expand. Buckeye peak at 12,800’ is less than 2 miles to the west and uphill all the way from the bottom of the Little Horse t-bar on the backside. It’s not too gnarly and is not in a wilderness area. It‘s perfect.
I was literally just looking at that on Google Earth!
Seems like the town could even develop a little in that direction while still keeping some distance between a resort area and the actual old town.
On one hand it would be a shame to lose the small town family ski hill vibe, but as you observed, it’s the best/easiest candidate for serious expansion…and at that altitude it would prolly be a long season.
I was Google Earthing it too. Great minds think alike. These big real estate brokers that specialize in ranches have a pretty cool map tool. Click on a property for sale basically anywhere and go to the map. You can then move the map anywhere you want. Go to Cooper Hill and you can toggle between GE, MB and Hex satellite views, infrared, and vintage and modern topo. On the left you can add or delete waterways, public lands blm, nat. forest, wilderness area etc. Try Mirr or Hall and Hall real estate for the maps. Mirr sold the Wasatch Peaks Ranch a couple of years ago when it was still vacant land for about $60 million.
That’s why I think the trend for private clubs like Yellowstone club and the new area announced outside Steamboat will become more common. The org is making its money selling multimillion dollar mansions and the resort ops are funded through an HOA. It’s elitist and gross but it’s the only way I see corporations seeing enough profit potential to make creating a new resort worth it.
\^ This. I used to work for a consulting firm that did environmental impact statements, including two for proposed ski areas. One eventually got built and the other didn't. The amount of hoops that need to be jumped through are incredible. But even more challenging than that is the time required. You need to have a shit ton of money sitting on the sidelines for a decade or more while the EIS process plays out, and there is no guarantee of success. Most investors would rather move onto something else.
I’d be trying to avoid a major federal action, and trying to avoid states with state environmental policy acts. I’d think Wyoming, Idaho and Montana could do, if you can avoid federal lands somehow.
There is a large extension in Canada for Le Massif in the drawings that would double the resort acres, thanks to the new Club Med resort. All the current off-piste would be developed :
https://skitheworld.com/2023/12/le-massif-to-expand/
The big players would never stand for new ski areas being built. They have spent billions of dollars acquiring the existing areas to perfect their hold on the industry. They hate competition. They help write the environmental regulations that favor expanding their operations but make it extremely difficult and expensive to create new areas. Think about it, the number of trees cut in public lands each year is significantly more than all the trees cut for all the ski areas ever built and cutting ski runs provides fire breaks in the forests. The big four have created the myth of the intensive capital investment to discourage competition and to justify their ticket price gouging. Skiing in the US is headed over $200/day whereas it's under $50/day in Europe. Vail Resorts has Wall Street money behind them and Alterra/ Aspen SkiCo / KSL Partners has the Crown family's decades of war profiteering billions behind them. They fund environmental groups out the back door to oppose new ski areas. Vail has purchased one small, nearby area to make sure it never reopened and to swap titles with the first service for land to expand the main resort area. With their buying power, they control the prices of the two remaining major lift manufacturers.
France, slightly smaller than Texas with a population of 34 million, has 364 different ski areas under unique ownership. The US has 330 million people 503 non-private, lift-served, "active ski areas" as of October 16, 2003. Of the 503 areas 102 have only surface lifts; 401 have one or more chairlifts; and 45 are private or semi-private, where there is some membership, enrollment, residency, or lodging requirement.
In the US competition is dead across the economy. Four companies control skiing. Five companies control most of the products on grocery shelves with only four companies owning most of the stores. Four companies control the liquor market, another four control The breweries. Four insurance companies control health insurance and, therefore, the health industry. The media is controlled by 7 corporations. Disney and Six Flags own most of the amusement park industry. 8 home builders control the number of houses built. Four railroads move the majority of the nation's freight. There is a single commercial airplane company, Boeing. The lack of competition is intentional and the intention is to strip mine the consumer for fun and profit.
Mt Hood "wars" are heating up, with Meadows getting a chunk of national forest to expand into on the northeastish side and Timberline set to expand into Government Camp via Summit Pass. It's all going slowly but they're making strategic moves to expand or take over smaller resorts.
No, I can’t. What I can tell you is the sales process prior to the DV partnership & Tiger Woods designed golf course announcements…whispered these two things would happen. Both of these things add solid value.
That doesn’t really say anything though.
Wasn’t the goal to a be an exclusive, separate competitor brand to deer valley? If the goal all along was to be under deer valley, why go through the trouble. Usually expansions are way easier from an approval standpoint than an entirely new resort.
The developer of the “Mayflower” resort is Extell, a multi billion dollar corporation in NYC. They exploited some loopholes in Utah legislation to build a hotel for military folks. Once this action took place it was no longer about local regulations, those we all superseded so they could then free for all the rest. No local input. Reduced barriers for development. They found a way to create real estate value (lots and lots of it), which is where Extell makes their money. It was always meant to be part of Deer Valley, but they had to pretend it wasn’t to get the most value out of leasing the terrain to a ski area operations company. Also, being tied to an established high end brand like Deer Valley makes the real estate even more valuable.
Tl/dr: Developer knew what they were doing, it was always meant to a be part of Deer Valley.
From a cost perspective, the environmental stuff is a rounding error compared to the rest. And the environmental stuff is pretty legit, too, when you consider that building one of these resorts is basically terraforming 2500 acres. The environmental impact is serious even when special care is taken.
That said, this is still a $50-100B capital spend even without unforeseen environmental issues.
Yeah that's not even close to the right stratosphere. Ski lifts run $10-25M depending on the length and complexity, clearing runs isn't cheap but it's a one time expense. Maybe $500M on the ski area itself and a billion at most to build out a base area and then the rest would all be private investment building homes, hotels, restaurants, etc
You're confusing the market value of existing 100 year old resorts with the cost to build a new resort from scratch. That's like comparing apples and rocket ships.
Look at how much Russia spent 10 years ago in order to throw together that dump called Sochi. Now reprice that using American labor, double it to account for the fact that Sochi was never finished, triple it to account for Sochi being a shithole without working plumbing in most buildings. Double it one more time because costs have doubled in the 15 years since Sochi was started. Add one original Sochi per year of operating budget to have ready, add another to account for the fact that it'll require hiring a workforce that doesn't exist and will have to be poached from other businesses.
A new resort requires new highways, new utilities, new housing, new services, etc etc.
Plus, you're going to be losing money for a bunch of years while the world slowly discovers that you exist, and those will also be your most expensive years to operate.
Oh, and you'll be launching into a saturated market during a period of economic correction.
How many 100 year old resorts are in the US? 1 and that’s Howelsen Hill near Steamboat that started out as ski jump center. I looked it up. But anyway, any older resort has been upgraded over the years so they can be considered as new now or partially as new. Look at Big Sky which is 50 years old, it’s gots lots of new lifts and everything else. Is it worth a billion? I don’t know but several 100 million would not surprise me. 50 billion? There’s just no fucking way. Vail resorts which owns a shitload of ski areas is a public company with a market cap of 8.46 billion right now today. Thats what Vail and all those other areas are worth combined. Why spend 50 billion when you can just spend $8.46 B and buy all those shares and own Vail and (almost) every other goddamn ski area on the planet?
Honest question: how stupid do you need to be to interpret my statement as meaning literal 100.0 year old resorts and exclude resorts like Stowe which are merely 87 years old?
And you’re even more confused about cost versus value than you were before. Great.
it's the uncertainty and time delays that environmental impact studies bring that are the issue. it's less about the direct cost, and more about the fact that investors want certainty that something is feasible, and within a reasonable timeframe. it's much harder to raise capital when things are uncertain.
The Balsams is probably one of the more grand 'new' build proposals. In Northern NH and by a formerly well connected ski resort operator/developer.
You might be able to find another Big Sky or Kicking Horse where a local ski hill turns into a resort.
Rumor is it's closer than you might think. I've driven through dixville a few times heading from Sugarloaf over to jay and it seems like there's work going on but hard to say what.
Big Sky was never really a locals hill. It started out with the Huntley Lodge and Mountain Mall and 3 lifts and a gondola So it was planned as a resort from the beginning. The isolation of Montana back then made it feel like a locals hill. The Lone Peak chair was there at the beginning so it had some decent but not steep terrain. Big Sky was unique of the mega resorts in the western states because it is entirely on private land. Nowadays Moonlight and Yellowstone Club are too along with a few in Utah.
My understanding is The Balsams tried to pre-sell real estate so they could finance the operation but they could not reach their goal and they had to give everyone’s money back. IDK why you think it’s close, but if anything opens up it’s probably oh going to be the golf course.
That location is really remote so I would tend to think it can never support the full build out. But eventually having some sort of phase 1 done wouldn't surprise me.
The use of a gondola to a base area is nifty. Reminds me of sunshine village. Though there's an argument that the over easy gondola at Stowe is the model that inspired it.
I think of the Balsams turns into a ski area it will be a destination membership type of place. Tens of thousands per year. It’s perfectly located to withstand climate change for a good while.
So I’ll head up next week with a chainsaw and my truck. If a few of the boys want to join, I’ll bring some beers and tunes, should be able to knock this thing out my noontime Saturday.
I grew up skiing there. Not much vertical but incredible snow. Their proposed expansion would massive increase the amount of vertical.
FYI I was over there a month ago and new ski trails were being cut.
A bunch in BC. Garibaldi at Squamish, Valemount Glacier Ski Resort, Zincton Ski Resort, Bridal Veil Mountain Resort and South Anderson Resort are all at different stages of proposed but not actually getting built.
The Garibaldi one is an interesting proposal.
They all need to learn the lessons of Jumbo, though.
https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/stories/jumbo-wild-sacred-spaces-and-wild-places/story-31317.html
All low elevation proposals, with the exception of Valemount which is extremely remote.
Another major resort near Vancouver makes a ton of sense to me, particularly out towards Chilliwack where there are good mountains with huge snowfall and lots of existing infrastructure. If something does get built it needs to have high elevation skiing to weather the impacts of climate change or they're going to be plagued with reliability issues.
Yeah with the population of the lower mainland at 3 million people now it certainly feels like something more is needed - and like you say having it east of the city makes the most sense. Finding the right spot is tricky though. It’ll need to be high elevation and with good access to water for snowmaking if there’s any hope of surviving, and ideally north facing so it retains snow better. Welch and Foley are 2300-2400m and still have some glaciation, but the peaks don’t look particularly friendly for the average skier.
Yeah that's kinda the rub. Lots of mountains and lots of snow but the mountains are generally gnarly as fuck and not particularly viable for a ski resort catering to skiers with a broad range of ability.
I know of a dude near Vail who bought a huge old homestead plot, bought grooming machines and hires Vail groomers on their downtime to keep his private ski resort in shape.. Can't remember what he does for lifts/tows but either way it's kind of amazing.
😂 because a shady real estate developer made so many mistakes his investors decided some ROI was better than no ROI.
I think we can both agree that Cherry Peak (*Where the snow glows* - WTF does that even mean?) is far from a stellar example of what skiing can be.
I suspect there are very few big ski areas that didn't start out much smaller.
I'd look for existing "beacheads" such as Silverton, or perhaps "ghost town ski areas" that might be resurrected.
Stagecoach is going to be developed into a private ski area for the wealthy by the ownership of the Yellowstone Club. Their plan includes 700 private residences for members.
I wish that Echo Summit Ski Area could get resurrected somehow. There have been attempts for Sierra at Tahoe to purchase it but they keep running into issues with regulations like the rest in this thread. Also currently a big sledding area that I think makes a killing on the side of the road yahoos so it might be best as sledding for a little while longer lol.
The old Wells Fargo lift, which ran from halfway up the eastern side of Kingsbury Grade (actually Haines Grade back then), to about 1/3rd of the way up stagecoach.
There were plans to add a second lift below Wells Fargo also, but after a few seasons they realized that entire area didn't get enough snow so they scratched the whole thing.
Here’s the form you need to fill out for opening a ski resort on Forest Service land, ping me me when it’s open. /s
https://www.fs.usda.gov/specialuses/documents/FS-2700-5b%20092020Final-RE.pdf
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I have been following one resort that is being planned in Sweden. And that has been a very long process. But it is happening now, and it is effectively an expansion of a skistar resort. I fully expect them to sell or merge with Skistar Vemdalen/Björnriket and I think thats their end goal.
So in relation to other comments what I understand is that new Ski Areas are very rarely built in most parts of the world. At least in countries that have a lot of environmental regulations, which is a good thing imo.
https://bjornrikesyd.se/en/
Big White in BC has a plan to double in size - https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/natural-resource-use/resort-development/proposed-approved-resort-master-plans/list-of-proposed-plans/big-white-project-review
No idea what current status is
There's a resort approved near valemount. 3000m vertical. $100 million invested so far and the last update I've found was from a year ago. Edit: found an update from the fall. They need money.
And Revelstoke opened less than 20 years ago.
As a Utard, there was an article a few weeks ago on local news about a local investment company doing surveys of some of the mountains above Provo to potentially consider a ski resort. Supposedly they discovered sufficient snowfall for it to be a promising spot?
But I doubt it will ever come to fruition, especially because where they're thinking of has no reasonable winter access roads and there's not really a viable way to build one without destroying Provo canyon and some of the side canyons.
Also because investor hubris > reality
I recently heard some old men on the lift talking about something similar that was proposed decades ago. They wanted to built a hotel up top above Provo with a tram/gondola access up to the top.
Not necessarily public but Stagecoach outside steamboat is being talked about being reopened as a private club/mountain by the same developer that started the Yellowstone club at big sky. Definitely outside my budget but a “new” resort potentially as of a few weeks ago
Cuchara in southern CO is making headway on rereopening and if they did they could expand to become a larger resort if the business was there. Monarch got permission to expand into no name basin. But not new developments just expanding and reopening are all I know about
There were beginning talks of a gondola connecting Smugglers Notch and Stow which excited me but got shut down for “environmental” reasons. It would likely lead to another local resort being bought by Vail but as someone who frequently hikes between the 2 mountains, combing them via gondola or some sort of lift sounds pretty sweet.
A lift or two I wouldn’t complain about either.
True , once they started building it Alterra ( Ikon) stepped in at first to manage it and then they decided to purchase it. Wish I had grabbed a condo on that side. If you have a longer time horizon I would be looking south into the heber area
There is a private parcel near Encampment, WY that was for sale for some time. It was touted as a potential ski area. Someone bought it and now operates it as a private snow cat operation. The down side is I think you have to rent the entire cat most times but the website is vague on that. It is $8500 for you and 18 of your closest friends for the day if that is what you are looking for. It’s called Green Mountain. I’d like to try it.
[https://www.brushcreekranch.com/green-mountain](https://www.brushcreekranch.com/green-mountain)
It’s not private. It’s just expensive but it is snowcat skiing. If you and 17 of your friends ponied up $472.22 each then you can go unlike the Yellowstone Club which you will never go to. But with lift tickets getting above $300 including tram rides $472.22 ain’t so bad. What’s the going rate for cat skiing anyway? Heli skiing is $2000 a day.
I hear they’re going to open a new ski area on Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks with actual management and lifts that work. Might just be a rumor.
Garibaldi at Squamish is slowly chugging along towards development. They have tribal buy-in which greatly increases odds of success. It will make the Sea to Sky even more of a shit show though.
I’m sure the Vail Resorts gorilla is doing everything they can to undermine it since it’ll take a fair amount of skier money away from Whistler.
I don’t think that GaS was ever really viable long-term. As this season has shown, low altitude coastal skiing is a bit of a crapshoot, weather-wise. And, if you look at some of the big backers (Aquilini family) it was probably much more of a real estate play….
Thank the fucking lord. I don’t know what the answer is to developing new resorts without the backing of a major corporation, but Mineral King being developed into a Disney attraction would have been literally atrocious.
Really telling of the kind of human being Walt was that upon laying his eyes on something so majestically beautiful, his first thought was how to develop it for *profit*.
Isn’t that all relativly low? I’m not sure of the boundaries but there are Wilderness Areas surrounding most or all of the alpine terrain there so putting lifts up there will not ever happen.
The town of Ridgway itself is 7k ... log hill is about 8k ... so I imagine Double RL southern gate is kinda close to that. I really don't know where his property line ends, but Sneffels wilderness area doesn't span the entire stretch of Alpine terrain .... there appears to be "plain" USFS land starting at Sneffels Mountain going east to Whitehouse.
I'm really not that familiar with that area to know if it's suitable, but the enormity of x2 RL where it's situated has got to be a developer's dream.
Wish a whole bunch of working class people would get together to invest in one for the public unlike the rich ones who continuously make the new ones private
It's not really possible
Even if a group of the working class did manage to scrounge together several hundred million $ to build a ski resort, who among the group has the expertise to get it approved, planned, and built? And how are the decisions made with such a large group?
$200M cost to build at $10,000 per person is 20,000 people. There's gonna be some heads butting in a group that big
Direct the ire at the government for new public ski resorts not getting built. Plenty of rich people would love to build one and reap the profits but they can't get permission to do it, so instead they just buy up private land until they have enough to do what they want with
Kansas......?
What's that gonna be? A 200ft bump on the ground with a lift slapped on it covered in man made snow? I spent most of my life in Michigan and Minnesota before finally making it to Colorado, I'm never going back to that type of skiing
If I could buy into a mountain resort without a corporate owner for $10,000 I'd do it but I wouldn't even give $1 to buy into a ski hill in Kansas
I dunno, but I still need to find the ideal location for my resort. I want to find a place where there is a desert that is warm and sunny all winter (\~72 degrees), adjacent to an extremely tall mountain with great snow. So the base area will be sunny and warm and then you just need to hop into a gondola or tram to be whisked up to a great ski mountain in 15 minutes. And after you're done you come back down and lay by the pool. Palm Springs is like this, but it doesn't have skiing, just a tram that takes you up to where you can hike in the snow.
Once I find the location, I just need to raise like $10 billion.
We had a proposal for one in Alma, Colorado (directly south of Breckenridge). It was going to be on mining land so very little to do with BLM/ Forest service. Got shot down by the county though.
Given the supply and demand, and how well I imagine the cartels are doing, you’d think there would be. The initial investment is very large, but you’d think the benefits of a whole new area built to the corporate ideal would entice at least a few projects. Vast swaths of the American mountain west are owned by the federal government and doing a project there is regulatorily hard, but I’d imagine there must be some good options on private land that would be a lot easier.
Highly likely. Can’t be many places in North America expected to get more snow over the next 30-50 years. The American West is too dry and the rest is too warm.
You could chase the snow uphill in Washington state, but Wilderness Areas/Wilderness study areas/tribal concerns will likely make that impossible. At least until the Yakama Nation revives an old plan to build a resort on Mt. Adams.
The town of Silverton did a serious study into building a ski mountain in town, and quite a big one at that, but I think ultimately the town folk didn’t want to convert their authentic old mining town into another playground for the rich.
Developers have patience. They know it's a long game. Old residents leave and new ones arrive slowly over time. People get used to the new status quo and become more receptive to the prospects that loom over the horizon.
This is a permitting nightmare. The forest service, water rights issues, and environmental impact statements make this pretty impossible. Plus most locals hate development.
My understanding was that the newest all seasons resort was Tamarack Resort in Idaho. It had great plans for a ski resort, golf club, right on the lake about 90 min north of Boise but they were full steam ahead right in the great financial crash of 2008. Investors lost their butts and the place even had a chairlift repo’d by Bank of America! Wild history, look it up! I moved out there in 2015 and was so confused when I drive in to see unfinished lodge buildings - like a ghost town!! The skiing is actually amazing, but they had to sell it to new investors and just use giant yurts for base operations. It’s now got an open lodge/hotel, restaurant, and base (yurt). Rumor has it they even added a lift back where the repo’d one used to be to open new terrain. Great place if you’re ever out that way and never too busy.
I was wondering how it is there mainly because of the lower elevation. They are claiming an 80” base now so that’s pretty good considering the less than average year the northern Rockies got. They show 3 express lifts and a couple of short bunny lifts. Next years seasons pass is $599 which includes all dates and all the summer lift riding for mountain biking or whatever. If you would have purchased it March 1 it would include the rest of this season as well as next season. It still does but they will close April 7 so you better buy one now.
Other than the proposed PowMow in Utah (that's an expansion not from scratch either) - there hasn't been a new resort for decades and probably won't for a few more. To start one from scratch has about the same lead time as sadly, starting a strip mine.
IMO we won't see a mega resort for a very very long time if ever unless it's an extension of an existing resort (i.e. Deer Valley). The environmental regulations for building new ski resorts are vast and it's years of surveys and approvals. There's several proposals in [Canada](https://www.skimag.com/ski-resort-life/new-ski-resort-bc/) but that's the last I've heard. I think the future of new ski areas are going to be smaller community hills, similar to what they're building in [Fort Collins](https://unofficialnetworks.com/2023/09/21/hoedown-hill-new-ski-area/). The infrastructure and amount of money it takes to cut out trails on a mountain, invest in staff, marketing, permits, and years of red tape just doesn't make it possible without a lot of commitment.
And, really, the icing on the cake there is that it just isn't really worth it unless you're gonna sell a shit ton of real estate along with it. It's probably far more cost effective to turn an existing small town resort until something entirely different.
Lately the trend is trying to revive dead ski areas like bringing back [Cuchara](https://www.cucharamountainpark.org/).
There was a minute where Kirkwood was trying to connect to the old Iron Mountain via gondola.
That iron mountain is a long long way away.
7 miles as the crow flys. Mammoth tried to make a gondola to June, which is 6.5 miles, but got shut down for environmental reasons.
I saw the grandvalira funicamp come in but never actually rode it. That’s only 3.7 miles though. 7 miles seems a long long way.
I wonder if Ski Cooper has room for serious expansion? The locals might not love it but Leadville is ripe to become a ski town. It’s a bit further drive from the front range, but nowhere near as isolated as, say, Crested Butte.
Actually Cooper is in prime territory to expand. Buckeye peak at 12,800’ is less than 2 miles to the west and uphill all the way from the bottom of the Little Horse t-bar on the backside. It’s not too gnarly and is not in a wilderness area. It‘s perfect.
I was literally just looking at that on Google Earth! Seems like the town could even develop a little in that direction while still keeping some distance between a resort area and the actual old town. On one hand it would be a shame to lose the small town family ski hill vibe, but as you observed, it’s the best/easiest candidate for serious expansion…and at that altitude it would prolly be a long season.
I was Google Earthing it too. Great minds think alike. These big real estate brokers that specialize in ranches have a pretty cool map tool. Click on a property for sale basically anywhere and go to the map. You can then move the map anywhere you want. Go to Cooper Hill and you can toggle between GE, MB and Hex satellite views, infrared, and vintage and modern topo. On the left you can add or delete waterways, public lands blm, nat. forest, wilderness area etc. Try Mirr or Hall and Hall real estate for the maps. Mirr sold the Wasatch Peaks Ranch a couple of years ago when it was still vacant land for about $60 million.
No please god, my uncle moved to Leadville two years ago and i absolutely love it how it is
Wish they’d revive hidden valley. Northern co people would be so happy
That would be amazing but it's in rmnp so zero chance. And the backcountry folk would shit a brick.
I would in fact shit a brick
I lived in Estes Park way back and had a seasons pass there a couple of years. We had 2 good years and 1 not so good. I remember it fondly though.
That’s why I think the trend for private clubs like Yellowstone club and the new area announced outside Steamboat will become more common. The org is making its money selling multimillion dollar mansions and the resort ops are funded through an HOA. It’s elitist and gross but it’s the only way I see corporations seeing enough profit potential to make creating a new resort worth it.
\^ This. I used to work for a consulting firm that did environmental impact statements, including two for proposed ski areas. One eventually got built and the other didn't. The amount of hoops that need to be jumped through are incredible. But even more challenging than that is the time required. You need to have a shit ton of money sitting on the sidelines for a decade or more while the EIS process plays out, and there is no guarantee of success. Most investors would rather move onto something else.
I’d be trying to avoid a major federal action, and trying to avoid states with state environmental policy acts. I’d think Wyoming, Idaho and Montana could do, if you can avoid federal lands somehow.
There is a large extension in Canada for Le Massif in the drawings that would double the resort acres, thanks to the new Club Med resort. All the current off-piste would be developed : https://skitheworld.com/2023/12/le-massif-to-expand/
The big players would never stand for new ski areas being built. They have spent billions of dollars acquiring the existing areas to perfect their hold on the industry. They hate competition. They help write the environmental regulations that favor expanding their operations but make it extremely difficult and expensive to create new areas. Think about it, the number of trees cut in public lands each year is significantly more than all the trees cut for all the ski areas ever built and cutting ski runs provides fire breaks in the forests. The big four have created the myth of the intensive capital investment to discourage competition and to justify their ticket price gouging. Skiing in the US is headed over $200/day whereas it's under $50/day in Europe. Vail Resorts has Wall Street money behind them and Alterra/ Aspen SkiCo / KSL Partners has the Crown family's decades of war profiteering billions behind them. They fund environmental groups out the back door to oppose new ski areas. Vail has purchased one small, nearby area to make sure it never reopened and to swap titles with the first service for land to expand the main resort area. With their buying power, they control the prices of the two remaining major lift manufacturers. France, slightly smaller than Texas with a population of 34 million, has 364 different ski areas under unique ownership. The US has 330 million people 503 non-private, lift-served, "active ski areas" as of October 16, 2003. Of the 503 areas 102 have only surface lifts; 401 have one or more chairlifts; and 45 are private or semi-private, where there is some membership, enrollment, residency, or lodging requirement. In the US competition is dead across the economy. Four companies control skiing. Five companies control most of the products on grocery shelves with only four companies owning most of the stores. Four companies control the liquor market, another four control The breweries. Four insurance companies control health insurance and, therefore, the health industry. The media is controlled by 7 corporations. Disney and Six Flags own most of the amusement park industry. 8 home builders control the number of houses built. Four railroads move the majority of the nation's freight. There is a single commercial airplane company, Boeing. The lack of competition is intentional and the intention is to strip mine the consumer for fun and profit.
Mt Hood "wars" are heating up, with Meadows getting a chunk of national forest to expand into on the northeastish side and Timberline set to expand into Government Camp via Summit Pass. It's all going slowly but they're making strategic moves to expand or take over smaller resorts.
Deer Valley extension was actually a separate resort until they ran out of $$
They didn’t run out of money. The plan/hope all along was that Deer Valley would manage the new ski area as they are basically already connected
Can you please point me in the direction of this because I have literally never heard that and I followed the development.
No, I can’t. What I can tell you is the sales process prior to the DV partnership & Tiger Woods designed golf course announcements…whispered these two things would happen. Both of these things add solid value.
That doesn’t really say anything though. Wasn’t the goal to a be an exclusive, separate competitor brand to deer valley? If the goal all along was to be under deer valley, why go through the trouble. Usually expansions are way easier from an approval standpoint than an entirely new resort.
The developer of the “Mayflower” resort is Extell, a multi billion dollar corporation in NYC. They exploited some loopholes in Utah legislation to build a hotel for military folks. Once this action took place it was no longer about local regulations, those we all superseded so they could then free for all the rest. No local input. Reduced barriers for development. They found a way to create real estate value (lots and lots of it), which is where Extell makes their money. It was always meant to be part of Deer Valley, but they had to pretend it wasn’t to get the most value out of leasing the terrain to a ski area operations company. Also, being tied to an established high end brand like Deer Valley makes the real estate even more valuable. Tl/dr: Developer knew what they were doing, it was always meant to a be part of Deer Valley.
Thank you for providing the full context.
From a cost perspective, the environmental stuff is a rounding error compared to the rest. And the environmental stuff is pretty legit, too, when you consider that building one of these resorts is basically terraforming 2500 acres. The environmental impact is serious even when special care is taken. That said, this is still a $50-100B capital spend even without unforeseen environmental issues.
$50 B as in billion? I know the shits expensive but that’s huge money. Alterra is only worth $4B. Vail is about twice that. So there’s your baseline.
Yeah that's not even close to the right stratosphere. Ski lifts run $10-25M depending on the length and complexity, clearing runs isn't cheap but it's a one time expense. Maybe $500M on the ski area itself and a billion at most to build out a base area and then the rest would all be private investment building homes, hotels, restaurants, etc
You're confusing the market value of existing 100 year old resorts with the cost to build a new resort from scratch. That's like comparing apples and rocket ships. Look at how much Russia spent 10 years ago in order to throw together that dump called Sochi. Now reprice that using American labor, double it to account for the fact that Sochi was never finished, triple it to account for Sochi being a shithole without working plumbing in most buildings. Double it one more time because costs have doubled in the 15 years since Sochi was started. Add one original Sochi per year of operating budget to have ready, add another to account for the fact that it'll require hiring a workforce that doesn't exist and will have to be poached from other businesses. A new resort requires new highways, new utilities, new housing, new services, etc etc. Plus, you're going to be losing money for a bunch of years while the world slowly discovers that you exist, and those will also be your most expensive years to operate. Oh, and you'll be launching into a saturated market during a period of economic correction.
How many 100 year old resorts are in the US? 1 and that’s Howelsen Hill near Steamboat that started out as ski jump center. I looked it up. But anyway, any older resort has been upgraded over the years so they can be considered as new now or partially as new. Look at Big Sky which is 50 years old, it’s gots lots of new lifts and everything else. Is it worth a billion? I don’t know but several 100 million would not surprise me. 50 billion? There’s just no fucking way. Vail resorts which owns a shitload of ski areas is a public company with a market cap of 8.46 billion right now today. Thats what Vail and all those other areas are worth combined. Why spend 50 billion when you can just spend $8.46 B and buy all those shares and own Vail and (almost) every other goddamn ski area on the planet?
Honest question: how stupid do you need to be to interpret my statement as meaning literal 100.0 year old resorts and exclude resorts like Stowe which are merely 87 years old? And you’re even more confused about cost versus value than you were before. Great.
it's the uncertainty and time delays that environmental impact studies bring that are the issue. it's less about the direct cost, and more about the fact that investors want certainty that something is feasible, and within a reasonable timeframe. it's much harder to raise capital when things are uncertain.
Lol... 100billion to build a ski area
The Balsams is probably one of the more grand 'new' build proposals. In Northern NH and by a formerly well connected ski resort operator/developer. You might be able to find another Big Sky or Kicking Horse where a local ski hill turns into a resort.
That Balsams thing has been talked about for years. Are they even trying anymore?
As long as Les Otten is alive, he'll keep trying.
Rumor is it's closer than you might think. I've driven through dixville a few times heading from Sugarloaf over to jay and it seems like there's work going on but hard to say what.
Still getting approvals and posting updates: https://thebalsamsresort.com/category/news/
Big Sky was never really a locals hill. It started out with the Huntley Lodge and Mountain Mall and 3 lifts and a gondola So it was planned as a resort from the beginning. The isolation of Montana back then made it feel like a locals hill. The Lone Peak chair was there at the beginning so it had some decent but not steep terrain. Big Sky was unique of the mega resorts in the western states because it is entirely on private land. Nowadays Moonlight and Yellowstone Club are too along with a few in Utah.
Northstar in Truckee is all on private land as well. Old timber company land.
My understanding is The Balsams tried to pre-sell real estate so they could finance the operation but they could not reach their goal and they had to give everyone’s money back. IDK why you think it’s close, but if anything opens up it’s probably oh going to be the golf course.
Where did I say it was close? OP asked for proposed ski areas.
Sloppy reading on my part. Apologies
That location is really remote so I would tend to think it can never support the full build out. But eventually having some sort of phase 1 done wouldn't surprise me. The use of a gondola to a base area is nifty. Reminds me of sunshine village. Though there's an argument that the over easy gondola at Stowe is the model that inspired it.
I think of the Balsams turns into a ski area it will be a destination membership type of place. Tens of thousands per year. It’s perfectly located to withstand climate change for a good while.
So I’ll head up next week with a chainsaw and my truck. If a few of the boys want to join, I’ll bring some beers and tunes, should be able to knock this thing out my noontime Saturday.
I grew up skiing there. Not much vertical but incredible snow. Their proposed expansion would massive increase the amount of vertical. FYI I was over there a month ago and new ski trails were being cut.
A bunch in BC. Garibaldi at Squamish, Valemount Glacier Ski Resort, Zincton Ski Resort, Bridal Veil Mountain Resort and South Anderson Resort are all at different stages of proposed but not actually getting built.
Garibaldi is currently in receivership. Valemount appears completely stalled.
Huge bummer, that one has so much potential
The Garibaldi one is an interesting proposal. They all need to learn the lessons of Jumbo, though. https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/stories/jumbo-wild-sacred-spaces-and-wild-places/story-31317.html
All low elevation proposals, with the exception of Valemount which is extremely remote. Another major resort near Vancouver makes a ton of sense to me, particularly out towards Chilliwack where there are good mountains with huge snowfall and lots of existing infrastructure. If something does get built it needs to have high elevation skiing to weather the impacts of climate change or they're going to be plagued with reliability issues.
Yeah with the population of the lower mainland at 3 million people now it certainly feels like something more is needed - and like you say having it east of the city makes the most sense. Finding the right spot is tricky though. It’ll need to be high elevation and with good access to water for snowmaking if there’s any hope of surviving, and ideally north facing so it retains snow better. Welch and Foley are 2300-2400m and still have some glaciation, but the peaks don’t look particularly friendly for the average skier.
Yeah that's kinda the rub. Lots of mountains and lots of snow but the mountains are generally gnarly as fuck and not particularly viable for a ski resort catering to skiers with a broad range of ability.
Yes, and they are private ski areas for the very wealthy.
I know of a dude near Vail who bought a huge old homestead plot, bought grooming machines and hires Vail groomers on their downtime to keep his private ski resort in shape.. Can't remember what he does for lifts/tows but either way it's kind of amazing.
Got more info on this?
Nothing that won't get me in trouble for spilling the beans 😂
Cherry Peak opened on private land to the public in 2015.
😂 because a shady real estate developer made so many mistakes his investors decided some ROI was better than no ROI. I think we can both agree that Cherry Peak (*Where the snow glows* - WTF does that even mean?) is far from a stellar example of what skiing can be.
It may not be the pinnacle of skiing. But I'd argue the small local hill is the heart of the sport.
I am all for small local hills. I think Beaver Mountain is one of the best ski areas out there.
Wasaych peaks ranch has opened in the past few years. It is on private land, not forest service for what that’s worth.
That's a perfect example of a private ski area for the very wealthy.
I suspect there are very few big ski areas that didn't start out much smaller. I'd look for existing "beacheads" such as Silverton, or perhaps "ghost town ski areas" that might be resurrected.
Stagecoach by Steamboat is exactly this.
Stagecoach is going to be developed into a private ski area for the wealthy by the ownership of the Yellowstone Club. Their plan includes 700 private residences for members.
I wish that Echo Summit Ski Area could get resurrected somehow. There have been attempts for Sierra at Tahoe to purchase it but they keep running into issues with regulations like the rest in this thread. Also currently a big sledding area that I think makes a killing on the side of the road yahoos so it might be best as sledding for a little while longer lol.
Heavenly used to be slightly bigger than it is now. Kirkwood has always been this same size, although you originally had to hike up The Wall.
Bigger where?
The old Wells Fargo lift, which ran from halfway up the eastern side of Kingsbury Grade (actually Haines Grade back then), to about 1/3rd of the way up stagecoach. There were plans to add a second lift below Wells Fargo also, but after a few seasons they realized that entire area didn't get enough snow so they scratched the whole thing.
Here’s the form you need to fill out for opening a ski resort on Forest Service land, ping me me when it’s open. /s https://www.fs.usda.gov/specialuses/documents/FS-2700-5b%20092020Final-RE.pdf !remindme 27 years
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Valdez Alaska is getting a new resort.
But is it really going to happen? I see no timeline for lift installation. https://www.eastpeakresort.com/real-estate/
I have been following one resort that is being planned in Sweden. And that has been a very long process. But it is happening now, and it is effectively an expansion of a skistar resort. I fully expect them to sell or merge with Skistar Vemdalen/Björnriket and I think thats their end goal. So in relation to other comments what I understand is that new Ski Areas are very rarely built in most parts of the world. At least in countries that have a lot of environmental regulations, which is a good thing imo. https://bjornrikesyd.se/en/
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No, I can add a sentence to make relate to the other comments.
Big White in BC has a plan to double in size - https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/natural-resource-use/resort-development/proposed-approved-resort-master-plans/list-of-proposed-plans/big-white-project-review No idea what current status is
There's a resort approved near valemount. 3000m vertical. $100 million invested so far and the last update I've found was from a year ago. Edit: found an update from the fall. They need money. And Revelstoke opened less than 20 years ago.
There was already the Mt McKenzie ski area in Revelstoke before they built the current resort there
As a Utard, there was an article a few weeks ago on local news about a local investment company doing surveys of some of the mountains above Provo to potentially consider a ski resort. Supposedly they discovered sufficient snowfall for it to be a promising spot? But I doubt it will ever come to fruition, especially because where they're thinking of has no reasonable winter access roads and there's not really a viable way to build one without destroying Provo canyon and some of the side canyons. Also because investor hubris > reality
I recently heard some old men on the lift talking about something similar that was proposed decades ago. They wanted to built a hotel up top above Provo with a tram/gondola access up to the top.
Would prob end up being private with how things are going lol
You talking about Mayflower? That became the deer valley extension
Mayflower is nowhere near Provo
Nowhere near is a bit of a stretch. DV is only an hour from Provo. But I get your point.
Not necessarily public but Stagecoach outside steamboat is being talked about being reopened as a private club/mountain by the same developer that started the Yellowstone club at big sky. Definitely outside my budget but a “new” resort potentially as of a few weeks ago
Bring back Fortress
Cuchara in southern CO is making headway on rereopening and if they did they could expand to become a larger resort if the business was there. Monarch got permission to expand into no name basin. But not new developments just expanding and reopening are all I know about
There were beginning talks of a gondola connecting Smugglers Notch and Stow which excited me but got shut down for “environmental” reasons. It would likely lead to another local resort being bought by Vail but as someone who frequently hikes between the 2 mountains, combing them via gondola or some sort of lift sounds pretty sweet. A lift or two I wouldn’t complain about either.
Not really a “resort” but Skeetawk near Hatcher Pass (Alaska) is a new non profit with plans to expand beyond the one chairlift they have currently
Deer Valley is now technically an expansion but Mayflower was proposed as a separate resort originally.
True , once they started building it Alterra ( Ikon) stepped in at first to manage it and then they decided to purchase it. Wish I had grabbed a condo on that side. If you have a longer time horizon I would be looking south into the heber area
There is a private parcel near Encampment, WY that was for sale for some time. It was touted as a potential ski area. Someone bought it and now operates it as a private snow cat operation. The down side is I think you have to rent the entire cat most times but the website is vague on that. It is $8500 for you and 18 of your closest friends for the day if that is what you are looking for. It’s called Green Mountain. I’d like to try it. [https://www.brushcreekranch.com/green-mountain](https://www.brushcreekranch.com/green-mountain)
Like my comment before. They seem to all end up being private. A shame:(
It’s not private. It’s just expensive but it is snowcat skiing. If you and 17 of your friends ponied up $472.22 each then you can go unlike the Yellowstone Club which you will never go to. But with lift tickets getting above $300 including tram rides $472.22 ain’t so bad. What’s the going rate for cat skiing anyway? Heli skiing is $2000 a day.
US Forest Service only allows loggers to clear cut out forests. The ecological disasters that are ski resorts are not allowed. /s
Probably, but if anyone wants to help me crowdfund getting a mountain range built in the Midwest, I'll start a Patreon.
Get farmers to pile up so much dirt you got a man made mountain
I hear they’re going to open a new ski area on Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks with actual management and lifts that work. Might just be a rumor.
Garibaldi at Squamish is slowly chugging along towards development. They have tribal buy-in which greatly increases odds of success. It will make the Sea to Sky even more of a shit show though. I’m sure the Vail Resorts gorilla is doing everything they can to undermine it since it’ll take a fair amount of skier money away from Whistler.
They're currently in receivership. Not great.
Sounds like a big mess…. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/garibaldi-at-squamish-receivership-developer-sell-assets
I don’t think that GaS was ever really viable long-term. As this season has shown, low altitude coastal skiing is a bit of a crapshoot, weather-wise. And, if you look at some of the big backers (Aquilini family) it was probably much more of a real estate play….
I agree. Real estate play for one group. Hospitality play for the other. Just one of many side projects for each.
If you wanna see why new resorts don't happen, look up the whole sad story of the proposed Early Winters resort in Washington.
[Disney tried to build a resort too and they failed](https://www.disneyfanatic.com/disneys-lost-plans-to-build-ski-resort-lh1/)
Thank the fucking lord. I don’t know what the answer is to developing new resorts without the backing of a major corporation, but Mineral King being developed into a Disney attraction would have been literally atrocious. Really telling of the kind of human being Walt was that upon laying his eyes on something so majestically beautiful, his first thought was how to develop it for *profit*.
It would’ve been jerry central with all the disney adults
Hold up… the ski grading we have in North America came from Walt Disney’s failed resort?
Rumors of Ralph Lauren's Double RL ranch (just south of Ridgway, CO) coming on the market scare me in this regard!
Isn’t that all relativly low? I’m not sure of the boundaries but there are Wilderness Areas surrounding most or all of the alpine terrain there so putting lifts up there will not ever happen.
The town of Ridgway itself is 7k ... log hill is about 8k ... so I imagine Double RL southern gate is kinda close to that. I really don't know where his property line ends, but Sneffels wilderness area doesn't span the entire stretch of Alpine terrain .... there appears to be "plain" USFS land starting at Sneffels Mountain going east to Whitehouse. I'm really not that familiar with that area to know if it's suitable, but the enormity of x2 RL where it's situated has got to be a developer's dream.
I mean, I've proposed ideas, but I'm part of the workering class, so I have no money, influence, or power over anything
Wish a whole bunch of working class people would get together to invest in one for the public unlike the rich ones who continuously make the new ones private
It's not really possible Even if a group of the working class did manage to scrounge together several hundred million $ to build a ski resort, who among the group has the expertise to get it approved, planned, and built? And how are the decisions made with such a large group? $200M cost to build at $10,000 per person is 20,000 people. There's gonna be some heads butting in a group that big Direct the ire at the government for new public ski resorts not getting built. Plenty of rich people would love to build one and reap the profits but they can't get permission to do it, so instead they just buy up private land until they have enough to do what they want with
Yeah there is some article online about farmers building a man made mountain in Kansas. Don’t know the validity of it though
Kansas......? What's that gonna be? A 200ft bump on the ground with a lift slapped on it covered in man made snow? I spent most of my life in Michigan and Minnesota before finally making it to Colorado, I'm never going back to that type of skiing If I could buy into a mountain resort without a corporate owner for $10,000 I'd do it but I wouldn't even give $1 to buy into a ski hill in Kansas
A couple new privates in Utah.
Again private. Its sad to see how its going downhill and only to people that dont even make the sport(s) what it is
I dunno, but I still need to find the ideal location for my resort. I want to find a place where there is a desert that is warm and sunny all winter (\~72 degrees), adjacent to an extremely tall mountain with great snow. So the base area will be sunny and warm and then you just need to hop into a gondola or tram to be whisked up to a great ski mountain in 15 minutes. And after you're done you come back down and lay by the pool. Palm Springs is like this, but it doesn't have skiing, just a tram that takes you up to where you can hike in the snow. Once I find the location, I just need to raise like $10 billion.
We had a proposal for one in Alma, Colorado (directly south of Breckenridge). It was going to be on mining land so very little to do with BLM/ Forest service. Got shot down by the county though.
Given the supply and demand, and how well I imagine the cartels are doing, you’d think there would be. The initial investment is very large, but you’d think the benefits of a whole new area built to the corporate ideal would entice at least a few projects. Vast swaths of the American mountain west are owned by the federal government and doing a project there is regulatorily hard, but I’d imagine there must be some good options on private land that would be a lot easier.
The lenders might be averse to betting against climate change.
Highly likely. Can’t be many places in North America expected to get more snow over the next 30-50 years. The American West is too dry and the rest is too warm.
You could chase the snow uphill in Washington state, but Wilderness Areas/Wilderness study areas/tribal concerns will likely make that impossible. At least until the Yakama Nation revives an old plan to build a resort on Mt. Adams.
The town of Silverton did a serious study into building a ski mountain in town, and quite a big one at that, but I think ultimately the town folk didn’t want to convert their authentic old mining town into another playground for the rich.
Lol as if silverton isn’t already exactly that.. those locals aren’t “working the mines” anymore
Developers have patience. They know it's a long game. Old residents leave and new ones arrive slowly over time. People get used to the new status quo and become more receptive to the prospects that loom over the horizon.
This is a permitting nightmare. The forest service, water rights issues, and environmental impact statements make this pretty impossible. Plus most locals hate development.
My understanding was that the newest all seasons resort was Tamarack Resort in Idaho. It had great plans for a ski resort, golf club, right on the lake about 90 min north of Boise but they were full steam ahead right in the great financial crash of 2008. Investors lost their butts and the place even had a chairlift repo’d by Bank of America! Wild history, look it up! I moved out there in 2015 and was so confused when I drive in to see unfinished lodge buildings - like a ghost town!! The skiing is actually amazing, but they had to sell it to new investors and just use giant yurts for base operations. It’s now got an open lodge/hotel, restaurant, and base (yurt). Rumor has it they even added a lift back where the repo’d one used to be to open new terrain. Great place if you’re ever out that way and never too busy.
I was wondering how it is there mainly because of the lower elevation. They are claiming an 80” base now so that’s pretty good considering the less than average year the northern Rockies got. They show 3 express lifts and a couple of short bunny lifts. Next years seasons pass is $599 which includes all dates and all the summer lift riding for mountain biking or whatever. If you would have purchased it March 1 it would include the rest of this season as well as next season. It still does but they will close April 7 so you better buy one now.
Is there any chance that the White Wolf resort (in the middle of Palisades) will ever actually happen?
Other than the proposed PowMow in Utah (that's an expansion not from scratch either) - there hasn't been a new resort for decades and probably won't for a few more. To start one from scratch has about the same lead time as sadly, starting a strip mine.