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The handwriting may already be on the wall, although no one really wants to read it. But it may be time for Colorado to begin preparing for a post-skiing culture.
Start with the numbers. In a state that's been growing like an overfed bacterial culture for most of a decade, Colorado skier numbers show an ominous flat line: 11.16 million in 1993-94, 11.10 million in 94-95, 11.88 million in 95-96, 11.84 million in 96-97, 11.98 million in 96-97 and 11.35 million last season.
Further, these declines are spread across the spectrum. It hit the big resorts: Vail dropped from 1.60 million skier-days in 1997-98 to 1.33 million in 98-99, and Winter Park from 1.04 million to 939,000. And it hit the small ones: Ski Cooper fell from 82,052 in 1997-98 to 62,145 last season, Sunlight from 102,389 to 78,290, and Monarch from 148,160 to 140,000.
While a few areas did show increases, either annual or
across a five-year span, the trend is pretty clear. Five
straight years of stagnation is not something you can
honestly blame on an occasional bad snow year.
Then you can look at the rankings published in Ski magazine's annual readers' poll. Colorado resorts, generally right at the top, declined -- Vail from first to fourth, Aspen from third to fifth.
Resort operators blamed the decline on a bad snow year,
although reader comments indicated that price was a major
factor: You'd have to sell a kidney to afford to ski [at
Vail].
But skiing has never been a cheap pastime. There must be other factors at work here.
When I was in school 30 years ago, skiing had a split reputation. On one hand, it was sophisticated and glamorous -- the Kennedys skied and movie stars hung out in Sun Valley and Aspen. On the other, skiing was a dare-devil adventure that ranked ahead of driving 90 on a gravel road, or so I heard from my friends who frequently ditched school for a day at Loveland Basin.
For one reason or the other, skiing attracted a lot of my fellow Baby Boomers, and as we got into our 20s and 30s, prime skiing years, the sport boomed.
But the knees of a 50-year-old are not really sprung for skiing, so Boomers turn to golf, swimming, cycling and the like.
To keep Boomers coming -- some of whom have plenty of money to spend -- the resorts have to groom their snow better while offering a more attractions than just skiing. Vail's plan is to get a piece of every dollar spent in that valley, be it food, clothing or shelter.
There's another big generation in its teens and early 20s now, and that should represent a big opportunity for the ski resorts. But if my kids and their friends are any indication, skiing is a rather staid and stuffy pursuit offering neither glamor nor adventure. Snowboarding is cool, but hard-core boarders with nose rings and purple mohawks don't feel real welcome at many resorts.
So skiing has an aging and shrinking demographic base, and no easy way to attract new customers without alienating current customers. Some resorts will survive, of course, just as there are still a few dog-racing tracks and miniature-golf courses.
But the bloom has faded from this rose. A comparison with mining might be instructive. It starts with the romantic prospector wandering the hills with his burro, who develops a claim on public land -- just as a few entrepreneurs scoured our hills for good ski slopes, then staked their claims on public lands.
There were some boom years that attracted outside capital, with the result that the excitement turned into an industrial routine operated by immigrant labor and demanding of public subsidies -- silver price supports a century ago for the absentee mine owners, an improved Interstate 70 now to benefit the absentee resort owners.
No one ever thought mining would collapse in Colorado, and it still remains. But it's not the big player that it was, and the same could hold for skiing.
How will we adjust? The ghost towns from the mining days are now tourist attractions, and abandoned ski towns should offer just as much charm as the decades pass. We are also fascinated by old mining machinery, and the bull wheels and lift towers should be just as interesting.
The only real problem is the modern requirement for reclamation. When a ski area is abandoned now, like Geneva Basin or Conquistador, the Forest Service wants to plant trees in its old runs and pretend that the place never existed.
Why is it that a failed enterprise from 1890 is
charming, but one from 1990 is an eyesore? Especially when
you consider that the 1890 stuff is decaying, and we'll
need new old things
as future tourist
attractions.
The best way to prepare for the inevitable is to preserve our boom-and-bust heritage by preserving those ghost ski runs. Keep the restoration crews away, so that there will be something historic to see when the 21st century is winding down.
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