Would you want to run a ski area?

Let's say that some rich cousin of yours died and left you a ski area. It's a generic ski area in the east with, say, 20 trails, and snowmaking on 3 of them (one long beginner run, one long intermediate run, and one expert run). Let's say that the area is profitable most years, taking in around $75,000 more than it spends, but in a horrible snow year like last year, it lost $100,000 (no idea if these numbers are realistic or not).

Would you quit your job and move to the town where this ski area is and give ski area ownership a try for a while? I definitely would.

What if there was risk involved? What if you had to put up $100,000 of your own money to buy the place? Does that change your answer?

mattchuck2 wrote

Let's say that some rich cousin of yours died and left you a ski area. It's a generic ski area in the east with, say, 20 trails, and snowmaking on 3 of them (one long beginner run, one long intermediate run, and one expert run). Let's say that the area is profitable most years, taking in around $75,000 more than it spends, but in a horrible snow year like last year, it lost $100,000 (no idea if these numbers are realistic or not).

Would you quit your job and move to the town where this ski area is and give ski area ownership a try for a while? I definitely would.

What if there was risk involved? What if you had to put up $100,000 of your own money to buy the place? Does that change your answer?

The bigger question, would you hire Sno to be your area manager?

Interesting idea for a thread.

I wouldn't.

In my late 20s I took something I loved to do (ceramics) and tried to turn it into a business.  It ruined it for me.  It changed the way I worked and I came to associate something that was previously joyful for me with drudgery.

Within a few years I quit and got into marketing and went back to a separation of what I loved to do and earning a living.  Being out in the mountains replaced ceramics as my escape.

Now I like where I am, using what I know about writing, seo and marketing to help places like Plattekill, Garnet Hill and a few other north country businesses. I never really planned it that way, but I like it and there are some benefits.

I'd turn it over to professional management with one stipulation. I get to groom. Yeah, one of those cool new groomers with the Recaro seats and the wraparound windows, and I'd install the most awesome stereo system in it with glass bending bass. Just light up and make courdoroy all night. Yeah.

I feel the same way Harv does about this. No way!

I have friends on ski patrol that never free ski on their days off for the same reasons.

I used to coach for the ski team here and I hated clocking in in my ski boots.

I had a professor tell me that there is a psychology theory about this, something like if you work doing something you love but the pay doesn't seem worth the effort the experience in itself becomes greatly devalued.

Take the place. Find same job in the area. Sell off the chairs and everything possible. Replace with one surface lift. Get about 20 people to kick in a grand or so per year. Just enough to cover tax's, maintain cutting the trails a few times a year, minimal lodge maintenance and keeping the cat running. No grooming though

That would be fun for about 5 years until the place was a mess

Now this sounds more interesting. Can it be in that snow belt near Buffulo and have a 1000 vert? A steep 1000k and 300 inches of average?

I would have a bar at the bottom where people kid bring their bagged lunches. No kitchen, maybe some pretzels and hot dogs. Maybe a taco stand but I'd keep it super simple.

I love the one surface lift area idea. Make it a local community hill. I would have an uphill traffic trail as well, keep it like a city park with dogs of leashes and all. Basically run a bar and manage vollunteers to do the landscaping. The anti-resort! That sounds rad.

I'd sell it to the Nature Conservancy.  No freaking way I'd own a small ski hill on the east coast where winters are trending shorter and shorter and shorter.  

Plus the only people who have cool ski industry jobs are the movie stars, but quite frankly dying isn't really the best way to make a living....

 

That's why I was thinking of just running a bar with a very large back yard. I guess it would have to be right in s town tho.

Very interesting scenario... I often cry to my wife about leaving my current job, and getting a job our local ski area.  Obviously, working at an area vs. owning and running an area are 2 completely different sides of the coin.  I think I would want to work in operations for a season or 2 at a different area in the region before I decided to take on the task of running this area.   I don't think I would risk any of my own capital unless I had a few partners to come along for the ride.  

I like skimore's idea.  

At the end of the day, I think I it's a tough decision on the grounds that I would not want one of my favorite recreational activities to become associated with work.

77 /78 I was hired as a reservation agent at Sugarbush for 4 to 10pm shift.
My desk was within earshot of then,new owner Roy Cohen. The first two hours of every shift Roy would vent an angry
stream of shit about employees,venders,equipment,state gov, you name it.He was a real treat to work for!
Anyway,Chan Weller was PR director, and a really good guy,with every issue of Powder in his office.
It snowed alot that January, skiing everyday felt right, and learning about the business was fun.Chan sat me down one
night and asked if I might want to make a career in skiing.
HELL NO I replied I JUST WANNA SKI.

The ski business is big capitol, low margins,weather dependent and seasonal.No thanks.
I buy a seasons pass and the hill is mine to share every mourning.

Can you start a new thread about working at the Bush in the 70s?

Frankly the ski biz in the east is a terrible investment especially on the small area end of the scale.  The clear probability that one in 5 years could be a disaster make it a bankruptcy waiting for a bad winter to happen.  You cant hope to keep up with the big boys in the scenario Matt laid out and you cant make real money with huge risk.

Don't shit where you eat, right?  I don't think I would want to run a place.  Owning and working at something you love could easily take the love away, although someone like Laz may be proof to the contrary!

Working and not owning, if you could find a nice corporate gig that gives you skiing benes that would nurture the love, maybe a different story.  Of course, we've always loved Disney, at least the old Disney the way Walt ran the place, before corporate raiders and the Eisner era shit the Company, but we always thought working at Disney would kill the magic.  You don't often want to see the man behind the curtain....much less be the man behind the curtain.  

Of course, you don't often get rich working for someone else.  Hmmm....is that annual after tax profit after I draw a liveable salary?

Simple answer : NOPE !!  Why work in a marginal industry that offers a huge risk most years and offers at best ,indentured servancy ??  All work , no play and beaucoup headaches .

..Sell that sumbitch and use the proceeds for better purpose and continue to ski at will rather than add the burden of trying to make a marginal operation make a razor thin margin  while working your ass off and having all the financial , operational and personnell problems .

There was an article recently interviewing Aaron and Jen Brill of Silverton Mountain and they even said that if they had the chance they probably wouldn't do it all over again.

The work that you have to put into making a small ski area successful just doesn't sound like it's worth it.

I still really like the idea of the most simple form of ski areas experience though, something like a community park. I think it could be done but it would have to be in the right place of course. Somewhere with little to no avalanche risk, plenty of hike to bonus vert, reliable plentiful snowfall, and with one or two simple surface lifts that serve around 1000 vert. Ideally it would be right in a town to. Silverton actually has a town hill that I think could work like this, in fact it already does the only thing it's missing are some managed skin/hike to lines well above the small town hill. There are even mining roads that leave right from the area and town that go up the mountainside for at least 2k of vert before getting into the alpine. There could actually be super long tree runs al the way back into town.


Here is a google earth image of Silverton and the small town hill. It's called Kendall Mountain http://www.skikendall.com/. You can see that it's not much but look at that mining road heading up to viewers left, it goes all the way up into the alpine with plenty of room for some killer tree skiing runs on that shoulder. It would be a bitchin option for a trip to Silverton especially since the ski area is only open four days a week. You could spend two days or four up on the area and then do a day or two of touring right out of town. It could be a good thing for the small businesses in town that struggle most of the year. The only glitch in this idea is that even in the trees in the San Juans can have serious avalanche problems. But maybe with enough skier compaction and some light mitigation it could probably be managed for very little $.

I worked 2 seasons at ski resorts when I was in my twenties and it never got to where I didn't want to ski on my days off. Some times I had to take a day just to rest though cause I would ski most work days, at least a little (being a liftie tires you out more then you would expect too). If I got a chance to have my own resort I would want to do it but I would share the reservations that others have stated here. I guess if my kids were done with college, I might take a swing at it but not with my own money. I'd write the best business plan I could and take it to a bank; let an objective third party judge the risk for me.

I would never want to work in the ski industry as a full time job, especially as an owner or manager. Or more to the point, an owner/manager. Managing a ski area probably breaks down into two categories... the small and mid-sized areas that have an owner on the front lines and rarely getting any down time during the season and the larger resort areas that have non-owning management. Neither seems appealing. Owning an area for financial return seems like a dubious business opportunity. Managers and owner managers are chained to their jobs and are probably working and not skiing most of the time (especially on powder days when the area in busier than normal and labor gaps need to be filled).

I'm currently looking to leave my current management job and either create or buy a small business. Working on a few ideas but nothing concrete quite yet. My first thought is "what type of business can I own and operate that will still leave me time to ski" and one answer to that is definitely NOTHING related to the ski industry. A business that doesn't open until dinner time everyday seems like one of the better answers. One question that I am not asking is "what do I love to do above all else?" Or better yet, I am asking that question and the answers are things I am definitely NOT going to incorporate into my business idea.

Some folks may be able to make the connection doing what they love full time and having enough money to hire enough help that they don't need to constantly be involved. But I suspect most owners and managers more often than not hate how much of their personal time is taking away from their passions by their work.

Hmmm. Expected more of a split.

I think it would be cool to build something completely personal at a ski area, make it into whatever your own version of skiing utopia is. I thought skimore's answer was about right.

But you guys are too cold, calculating and rational. Yeah, no shit, you can make more money and have a more definite paycheck doing something else. And yeah, there's stress, but there is stress with almost every job.

I can't understand the people who don't want to work in the business of the thing they like to do. You must like something about doing your regular job. You jump out of bed and go every day. Weird that you don't have that mindset when it comes to your job, but you do have the mindset when it comes to skiing.

If you're arguing that you'd get more skiing time if you didn't own the place, I sympathize with that argument, perhaps you're not envisioning the kind of ownership that I am.

We're a cynical, depressed bunch regarding the future of skiing. After reading these posts I wonder if anyone or corporation will buy Jay or Burke. Of course, any small business owner knows that work is 24/7 and enthusiasm can only last for so many years. Last winter while skiing at Whitewater in Canada, I had a conversation with a retired east coaster who had worked for several decades at the Bush. The conversation quickly turned into an epic rant about the horrible,soul sucking state of the east coast skiing industry and east coast skiing. I thought that I would have to perform a mercy killing to put him out of his misery but then he looked out the window at 3000 acres of powder with no ice or crowds and he morphed back into mr happy retirement guy. If there was a hot tub time machine and it was set for 1970 and I could bring back fat skis, I would happily put my life savings and others into buying a small area thinking that skiing will always be great with great winters and not knowing that Trump was lurking in out future.