Ski Industry

An international visa program that for years has allowed ski instructors and other resort workers from Australia, New Zealand, South America and Europe to work at Colorado ski areas just took another major hit – this time from an unlikely source in the Obama administration.
The Aspen Daily News reports 57 foreign ski instructor set to [...]

Colorado-based ski industry leader Vail Resorts is the state’s top purchaser of renewable-energy credits (RECs), according to a recent report released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the company ranks 25th in the nation.

Can Colorado’s ski industry, which markets to millionaires who jet in on fuel-guzzling Gulfstreams, inhabit 10,000-square-foot starter castles two weeks a year, ski on artificial snow and walk on snow-melted streets, in any way lay claim to being a green leader?

Gov. Bill Ritter’s comment Thursday that Colorado’s ski and hospitality industries are being hurt by tougher state immigration laws adopted in 2006 is only partly true.

Nero may have fiddled while Rome raged in flames, but the fur-clad folks who frequent tony winter retreats such as Vail and Aspen apparently prefer to ski while the nation plunges into the depths of economic despair.

Those who for decades complained bitterly about the ever-escalating price of a ski-lift ticket (both Vail and Aspen charge about a C note these days) never stopped to think about the relative cost compared to the other posh pursuits of the not-so-idle rich.

Denver waiter and avid skier Kristopher Klain is expanding on the time-honored ski-area tradition of charging huge sums for greasy food by propelling a vehicle with that grease and transporting skiers to the slopes.

As if the underfunded U.S. Forest Service didn’t have enough to worry about regulating mining, oil and gas production, logging, cattle grazing and ski-area development on national forest land, now it’s in the photography business too.

The hue and cry over the unwashed rabble likely to snap up cheap ski passes and invade Vail this winter, clogging its roads and jamming its ski slopes and parking garages, has morphed into the “All the Love” ad campaign as quickly as you can say “economic downturn.”

Somewhere way down Barack Obama’s list — likely trailing ending the war in Iraq, resuscitating the DOA economy, health care reform and achieving energy independence — is the agenda of the nation’s ski industry.

A Durango-based nonprofit ski-industry watchdog group issued its annual environmental scorecard last week, ranking four Colorado resorts in the top 10 with “A” grades and flunking two in the bottom 10 with “F’s”.