Utah resort ownership wrangling.

New backcountryskiingcanada.com friend Marc Peruzzi, just wrote a great piece on the shenanigans in the Utah resort world for Outsideonline.  This is all on top of last year's Ski Link story which was alluding to here, in our forums (it's also referred to at the end of Marc's article). Dirty little secret is that Talisker--one of the key players--is based in Toronto. That's right...a corp from Canada is mixing it up with the big boys, eh.

somewhere in Utah...

Re"printed" from outside online. Written by Marc Perluzzi.

What Does Vail's Takeover in Park City Mean for Skiers?

It’s rare that the blanched, distended underbelly of the corporate ski industry gets exposed to the skiing public, but that’s exactly what’s been happening for the past three seasons in the mountains above Park City, Utah. If you don’t read Bloomberg or own a major piece of Vail Resorts, you might not have been paying attention. Here’s an easily digestible overview.

Unlike most big ski areas in North America, Park City Mountain Resort—the ski area whose runs flow directly into the town of Park City—operates almost entirely on private land. PCMR owns the land at the base. A company named Talisker Corporation owns much of the rest: the important stuff with the lifts, snowfall, and the inclines that make for fun with gravity.

Until recently, Talisker also operated Canyons ski resort—the second of the three greater Park City area resorts that sits just to the northwest of PCMR. That was the status quo until March 2011 when, in Ivy League MBA terms, "somebody effed up, yo."

That’s when PCMR failed to send in the paperwork and renew its sweetheart terms on the land it leased from Talisker. Sweetheart deal is no understated cliché here. The terms dated back to the 1970s and gave PCMR full use of the land—around 3,500 acres—for $150,000 a year. It was widely considered by industry insiders to be the best lease in the ski business.

Imagine if you had a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan and the only thing you had to do to keep it was pay your pittance of rent on time and occasionally send in some paperwork saying you wanted to maintain the arrangement for the next 20 years. For reasons that remain unclear—the company says it was an honest mistake—PCMR was late to do that. Too late it turns out.

That’s when skiing showed its Gordon Gekko side. PCMR, understandably if a bit like a college student with a late term paper, attempted to cover up its misstep by post-dating the paperwork. Talisker, which isn’t really a ski resort operations company but long understood the value of the land PCMR was renting, promptly sold the operating lease of Canyons to Vail Resorts—the largest ski resort company in North America. 

That’s why most advanced skiers head to the Ninety-Nine 90 lift and stay there, just as they congregate at the McKonkey’s or Jupiter Bowls on the Park City side. Adding the multi-summit PCMR terrain to Canyons means upwards of 14 drainages and nearly as many summits and lesser peaks over those 7,500 acres. Unless you like riding lifts and contouring more than skiing the fall line, you would never traverse the extent of the mega ski area in a day. It’s too spread out: one PCMR plus one Canyons does not a Chamonix make.

The fact that Canyons and PCMR are the subject of such heated debate, however, speaks to the changing dynamics of the ski business where broad-ranging season pass deals now outweigh the sale of individual lift tickets. The idea is to lock in as many skiers as possible to your brand.

The controversy is also emblematic of the growing value of Utah as a ski destination. Vail Resorts’ holdings in Colorado alone see more skier visits than the entire Beehive State, but Utah skiing has grown steadily since before the 2002 Olympic Games, largely due to ample snowfall and perhaps the easiest access in the sport. Those seven Wasatch resorts are—no hype—within 45 minutes of Salt Lake’s airport. As comparison, try to get to a major destination resort from Denver International along the ever-busier I-70 corridor on a weekend in less than three-hours. (Bring lunch.)

Then there's Ski Utah's One Wasatch concept. Their goal is to connect the seven resorts of the Wasatch Front with lifts and runs. One of those proposed lifts—the Ski Link—would string a tram from Canyons to Solitude ski area in Big Cottonwood Canyon. That idea has raised the ire of backcountry skiers and environmentalists, but connecting Canyons with PCMR is not something anyone would bother fighting. As for the Ski Link tram basing out of a combined PCMR/Canyons resort, why would Vail Resorts send its skiers to Solitude? The short answer is they won't. The Ski Link idea has been officially "tabled" by Canyons, and it's no longer a One Wasatch initiative. Phew.

As a publicly-traded, for-profit business, Vail Resorts has to act in its own best interests and the best interests of its shareholders. And that speaks to the other oft-vocalized concern about Vail Resorts moving to town. In Colorado, Vail pulled out of the trade association Colorado Ski Country years ago. The undisputed leader in the season pass war, their strategy is to brand, promote, and ultimately sell the Epic Pass. It’s difficult to see how pushing the One Wasatch agenda helps that cause.

For now, the matter goes back to the courts for an appeal process that is expected to take up to a year. All sides have promised that PCMR will be operational during the legal battle. That would be hugely beneficial to the players it’s easy to empathize with: the lifties, fry cooks, ski patrollers, shop technicians, and waiters who call the great town of Park City home and probably like being employed—when it’s not a powder day anyway. In Outside’s role as an observer of the ski industry and a supporter of the skiing public, we’d like to see that promise kept—as the contract lawyers bluff, hold, and finally lay their cards on the table.