Word: ski
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...other end of the spectrum, more and more skiers are switching to cross-country, also known as ski-touring. The participant simply strikes out through forest and farmland as he pleases. With the proper waxes, cross-country skis can be made to stick to snow and allow a skier to climb hills fairly fast and easily. Cross-country is much cheaper than downhill skiing: the soft boots and long, thin skis can cost less than $50, and there are no lift fees. The sport is easy to learn; a day's instruction will make a proficient ski-tourer...
Commercially, skiing is being transformed from a folksy, country-store business into a serious and well-financed industry. In the past, an enterprising farmer or a ski bum whose legs were growing old would dip into his savings and put up a rope tow on a nearby hill. Today large corporations are cashing in on snow business. Ralston Purina has bought a 62% interest in Keystone, Colo. Subsidiaries of LTV, the conglomerate, own the land, lodges and lifts at Steamboat Springs, Colo. Abroad, some of the world's most famous wealth-that of the Aga Khan, the French Rothschilds...
...class of ski entrepreneurs, who combine a love of the sport with hardheaded managerial techniques, is rising. Backed by banks or syndicates of investors and aided by business-school-trained executives, they are building whole new ski towns. Eighty miles west of Denver, for example, Charles D. "Chuck" Lewis opened the Copper Mountain area last month. Lewis, a onetime Vail executive, first got a land-use permit from the U.S. Forest Service, which controls most of the mountains in the West, and issues permits for a percentage of the area's gross receipts or fixed assets. Then he raised...
They cannot be run for quick profit, either. Ted Johnson, onetime manager of a ski lodge at Alta, Utah, last year opened Snowbird not many miles away. Johnson and his principal backer, Texas Oilman Dick Bass, have dumped $17 million into Snowbird, including $2,250,000 for a Swiss-built aerial tram that carries 125 people at a time up an 11,000-ft. incline to the main peak. The tram, most capacious of its kind in the world, is started and stopped by a computer. Johnson and Bass do not expect to be in the black for another...
...resort can be as tricky as schussing blindfolded. "Two or three years ago people were saying that there was white gold in those hills," says Baron Edmond Rothschild, who owns part of France's Megeve resort. "Well, there isn't any to be found. The trouble with skiing is that the season is too short." In the West, the season often lasts only from Thanksgiving to late April, about 150 days. In milder climates the business is even more precarious. Tennessee's Viking Mountain area folded last year after trying to survive on a 50-day season...