Sunday, 06 February 2022 / Published in Uncategorized

Tom Clyde: Everybody's business | ParkRecord.com – The Park Record

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What a weird winter. For all practical purposes, it hasn’t snowed since New Year’s day. There have been a couple of dustings — flurries, really — but nothing significant. The dustings made a big difference in ski conditions for a while. The mountain managers and groomers clearly know what they are doing, and somehow were able to fluff an inch of not-great snow into a surface that was really skiable. Apparently the folks at Corporate have not been able to mess that up remotely, and the local experts who know the snow and know the mountain have been left alone. The results are impressive. Makes you wonder how other operations would look if the capable local people were left alone to solve problems without consulting the Death Star.
That said, it’s hard to run a ski resort without snow. It’s an essential ingredient. I suspect we will see that in China, where the Olympics are being held in a place that doesn’t get snow. Everything is on machine-made snow. It could work, but it seems like an odd choice by the International Olympic Committee. Maybe the next winter Olympics should be held in the Texas Panhandle where they don’t have snow (except for maybe this week), and don’t have mountains, either.
Even with the groomers and snow-makers working their magic, ski conditions this last little while have been sort of character building — hard, icy and cold. My house is usually a little colder than in Park City. I’ve been stuck between 0 degrees and about 25 degrees for a month. A couple of days, for no more than an hour or so, it would break above freezing. But never long enough for things to melt. We try to keep a layer of snow on the gravel road so the snow blower doesn’t gag on gravel. That layer has been compacted and refined into a slab of ice so smooth it looks like we had the curling team come through with their brooms to buff it out. Even in four-wheel drive, there’s no confidence that turning the steering wheel will matter.
Typically, the cold weather breaks during the second week of February, and things warm up. That’s good and bad. Without more snow, the warmer weather will quickly melt what there is. There are already bare spots here and there, and a couple of nights above freezing will really melt things back.
We need snow.
We need snow to ski on, and we need snow to fill our near-empty reservoirs so there is something coming out of the faucet in August. Prudent water managers would have demanded conservation last year, and left a little in the reservoirs, just in case. We didn’t reduce consumption enough to matter, gambling that this winter had to be “normal” because, well, just because. If the reservoir is empty and the pumps are sucking air, there’s not much we can do about it. There isn’t a way to fix that one.
A lot has been written about Vail Resorts’ management, and that could be fixed. I’ve certainly been vocal in my disappointment. Things are improving at PCMR — the Thaynes chair was turning this week, not loading, but maybe getting ready for the upcoming holiday. The town has been dead quiet this last month, aside from weekends, so lift lines haven’t been an issue. It feels almost normal. But I don’t think much has really changed.
Vail Resorts is a private business, and there isn’t much the City Council can do to change their management approach. But unlike Café X, which can serve up botulism until it goes out of business, leaving the rest of us unscathed, the ski resort is the foundation of the whole local economy. We’re a company town, and almost every other business depends on the ski areas to present quality experiences. In that sense, the ski areas are more like the power company than the ski shop on the corner. If the power company became so slipshod that the lights went out frequently, there is the Public Utilities Commission there to deal with the level of service. There isn’t a Public Ski Resorts Commission.
It’s easy to say unhappy customers can vote with their feet, letting the market fix it. That works for the vacationer from Milwaukee. It’s less helpful for the local resident, and disaster for the local businesses dependent on the ski resorts. It’s a long drive to Snowbasin. There isn’t a fundamental right to ski, but it is the fundamental reason that most of us are here.
We’re all in this together. There ought to be discussions with the city about meaningful caps on holiday crowds that overwhelm public transit, street capacity and really crushed the whole town. The Christmas goat rodeo can’t become “normal.” Anybody else throwing that impact on city services would need special permits (think Sundance). The hotel development proposal on the parking lots effectively severs the parking from the resort ownership, and eliminates any ability to build more — which they clearly need. Maybe the city should table any further discussion about the hotel project until the operation of the resort is figured out. Making the partnership between the town and the resort work is the most important issue in town right now. And while the resorts are private businesses, they are also everybody’s business.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.

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