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65% of all ski resorts in the US have closed since 1960s (2022)

34 points by insane_dreamer 2y ago

insane_dreamer 2y ago
31% have closed in Canada in the same period
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
NaOH 2y ago
Actual title: Ski Resort Closures and Opportunities for Sustainability in North America
Ichthypresbyter 2y ago
Posting from the perspective of an American East Coast skier: An interesting question is whether what is happening is loss or consolidation? In other words, while there are fewer ski resorts in the US, is the total size of the remaining resorts larger or smaller? A quick look at skimap.org [0] shows both a lot of closed resorts, and archived maps from the open resorts that show that a few decades ago they were much smaller, both in terms of lifts and trails. Unfortunately, a reliable measurement of ski area capacity is hard to come by. Even if we only look at the US (so ignore the fact that European resorts measure their terrain in km of piste while North American ones use skiable acres), the figures they quote can be inflated. The ideal figure to use is comfortable carrying capacity [1] but this is a trade secret. Possibly one could use total lift uphill capacity (or an estimate based on the lift type)? There are a few factors driving the death of small local ski resorts. I think this is a bad thing and endangers the future of the sport by raising the barrier in terms of cost and travel for new skiers to try it, at the same time as mega passes make skiing cheaper than it has ever been for people who ski a lot. But it's not just climate change (the article touches on this). One issue is the necessity and cost of snowmaking. Climate change has something to do with this (resorts that could open on all-natural snow now can't) but the real issue is that once one resort installed snowmaking, its rivals had to do so or go out of business. The Christmas vacation week is the biggest money maker for ski resorts, but skiing on the East Coast on natural snow at Christmas has never been reliable south of about Killington. The first season Okemo operated (without snowmaking), they didn't have enough snow to open to the general public until February. Another issue is insurance. The court case of Sunday v. Stratton in the 1970s dramatically raised resort's insurance premiums and forced them to spend more money on trail maintenance, replacing the old narrow CCC-style trails with today's wide "boulevards". (A novice skier tripped over a bush at the edge of a beginner trail, hit his head on a rock and became paralyzed. He sued the resort and won). Finally, there's better roads and more reliable cars. This means that skiers might be willing to travel further to a better mountain rather than ski at their small local hill. The closure of Braddock Heights ski area on the outskirts of Frederick, Maryland, coincides almost exactly with US-15 being upgraded to a four lane highway, making it much quicker for skiers from Frederick to drive to the larger Liberty resort in Pennsylvania. Taken together, there are a lot of reasons why smaller ski areas have closed. Some are climate related, others not. [0]https://skimap.org/regions/view/187 https://skimap.org/regions/view/187 [1]https://www.saminfo.com/archives/2020-2029/2024/may-2024/the-question-of-capacity https://www.saminfo.com/archives/2020-2029/2024/may-2024/the...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Sunday v. Stratton Could state law mitigate this? In essence, someone can certify themselves as an expert and thus waive liability for the resort? (I assume this would also void one's life insurance policy.)
  - scythe 2y ago
    When I was a kid we would go skiing in Colorado and there were big signs near most of the major lifts describing the Colorado Ski Safety Act: https://donaldsonlaw.com/recreational-accident-attorney-denver/winter-sports-injuries/ski-safety-act/ https://donaldsonlaw.com/recreational-accident-attorney-denv... The signs at Breckenridge have mostly been taken down, as I recall. But the Act still exists.
  - dmckeon 2y ago
    Many states[0] have explored this. IIRC, the New Mexico legislature once, back in the 1980s, helpfully defined alpine skiing as a "hyper-dangerous" activity, trying to place all liability on the skier, but a reference eludes my google-fu. [0] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/pa-supreme-court/1528129.html#footnote_15 https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/pa-supreme-court/1528129.h...
- applied_heat 2y ago
  While lift ticket prices have maybe doubled in the last 20 years, I am sure costs For the ski areas have more than doubled, like You said insurance, but also parts, labour,
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  There is also the issue of the massive migration to the Sunbelt. Once you have to take a plane to ski you shrink the market significantly. Where I am in Washington has seen massive population growth and the ski resorts have not kept up, but I have not heard anything about new ski areas opening in the state.
  - Ichthypresbyter 2y ago
presentation 2y ago
Even if ski resorts followed every sustainable practice stringently it wouldn’t change much, wouldn’t it? It’s not like ski resorts are the drivers of climate change, or even that climate change is really what causes ski resorts to close.
- caminante 2y ago
  This is a weird paper. Optimizing sustainability won't save your resort. A few other commenters are complaining about lack of snow (climate change), but the real drivers are fundamentals (e.g. cost of leasing protected forests or grooming) and trends like younger generations wanting ski weekends over ski weeks. If you can't stay relevant, you perish.
paleotrope 2y ago
This is interesting. "In addition, at the time of research, there are five states (Alabama, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas) and two provinces (Northwest Territories and Prince Edward Island) with only 1 resort remaining. Details of state/province/territory data can be seen in Table 2." I found it hard to believe that Texas has a ski resort. I did some searching and I can't find any evidence that this is true. RI and Alabama both have one. Seems easy enough to check.
- jghn 2y ago
  I imagine "resort" is doing heavy lifting.
  - paleotrope 2y ago
    Apparently the one in Alabama opened for the first time in 5 years recently. https://www.skimag.com/news/alabama-cloudmont-ski-resort-opens-for-first-time-in-5-years/ https://www.skimag.com/news/alabama-cloudmont-ski-resort-ope...
    - paleotrope 2y ago
      I wonder how much of this is just the fact that main ski resorts started when the 10th came home from WW2. Those guys ended up founding alot of these resorts. Areas in the backcountry, where the land was super cheap and they managed to get leases for them for pennies. Over time they became more commercial and less of a personal project. Plus these areas became more valuable because of the skiing and that priced out the locals, the people that actually worked the slopes. I think this story is way more complex then to point to climate change.
- dbjacobs 2y ago
  Mt Aggie, a synthetic ski slope is the only one in Texas I know of.
readthenotes1 2y ago
Also >65% of people in the US are overweight.
rascul 2y ago
> In addition, at the time of research, there are five states (Alabama, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas) and two provinces (Northwest Territories and Prince Edward Island) with only 1 resort remaining. Details of state/province/territory data can be seen in Table 2. The time of the research appears to be 2022. They only found one in Maryland? There's more... This data doesn't seem accurate, or they have a weird way of classifying resorts, or something. update Ok I misremembered. I got some of the states mixed up. Maryland may only have one, but Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia have several.
pjdesno 2y ago
I've always thought that there ought to be a way to create an investment fund specializing in East Coast ski resorts, Florida homeowners insurance, and other investments that are getting hammered by climate change, and advertise it on Fox News as being for investors who "are smart enough to know that climate change is fake" or something like that. Unfortunately it would probably be illegal, as it seems like a textbook example of pump and dump. Unrelated, the comments here bring up a good point - ski resorts have been supersized since the 60s, just like grocery stores and fast food portion sizes, so even though the loss of skiing is real, the number of resorts may be a lousy metric for it.
- Gys 2y ago
  > Unfortunately it would probably be illegal, as it seems like a textbook example of pump and dump. Why? You are not withholding information. In a pump and dump you do (you withhold telling them you want to sell early)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
iancmceachern 2y ago
My buddy and I have talked about this for decades, done the math. They're simply not profitable anymore. Too much seasonal skilled labor, too much making snow, etc.
- deepfriedchokes 2y ago
  The cost of living is going to kill leisure for a large portion of the working class.
  - iancmceachern 2y ago
    Not just leisure, but simple rights of life. Not good.
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    It's called "Baumol's cost disease". Rising wages due to higher productivity are great for wage earners. Productivity growth isn't uniform though. A 2025 automated factory produces much more goods per worker than a 1925 factory. A 2025 barber doesn't cut hair much faster than a 1925 barber though. But wages tend to rise for the entire economy. So as productivity increases, labor for any sector that doesn't scale is going to become relatively more expensive. Ski resort labor doesn't scale. It's a first world problem.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

31% have closed in Canada in the same period

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

NaOH 2y ago

Actual title: Ski Resort Closures and Opportunities for Sustainability in North America

Ichthypresbyter 2y ago

Posting from the perspective of an American East Coast skier: An interesting question is whether what is happening is loss or consolidation? In other words, while there are fewer ski resorts in the US, is the total size of the remaining resorts larger or smaller? A quick look at skimap.org [0] shows both a lot of closed resorts, and archived maps from the open resorts that show that a few decades ago they were much smaller, both in terms of lifts and trails. Unfortunately, a reliable measurement of ski area capacity is hard to come by. Even if we only look at the US (so ignore the fact that European resorts measure their terrain in km of piste while North American ones use skiable acres), the figures they quote can be inflated. The ideal figure to use is comfortable carrying capacity [1] but this is a trade secret. Possibly one could use total lift uphill capacity (or an estimate based on the lift type)? There are a few factors driving the death of small local ski resorts. I think this is a bad thing and endangers the future of the sport by raising the barrier in terms of cost and travel for new skiers to try it, at the same time as mega passes make skiing cheaper than it has ever been for people who ski a lot. But it's not just climate change (the article touches on this). One issue is the necessity and cost of snowmaking. Climate change has something to do with this (resorts that could open on all-natural snow now can't) but the real issue is that once one resort installed snowmaking, its rivals had to do so or go out of business. The Christmas vacation week is the biggest money maker for ski resorts, but skiing on the East Coast on natural snow at Christmas has never been reliable south of about Killington. The first season Okemo operated (without snowmaking), they didn't have enough snow to open to the general public until February. Another issue is insurance. The court case of Sunday v. Stratton in the 1970s dramatically raised resort's insurance premiums and forced them to spend more money on trail maintenance, replacing the old narrow CCC-style trails with today's wide "boulevards". (A novice skier tripped over a bush at the edge of a beginner trail, hit his head on a rock and became paralyzed. He sued the resort and won). Finally, there's better roads and more reliable cars. This means that skiers might be willing to travel further to a better mountain rather than ski at their small local hill. The closure of Braddock Heights ski area on the outskirts of Frederick, Maryland, coincides almost exactly with US-15 being upgraded to a four lane highway, making it much quicker for skiers from Frederick to drive to the larger Liberty resort in Pennsylvania. Taken together, there are a lot of reasons why smaller ski areas have closed. Some are climate related, others not. [0]https://skimap.org/regions/view/187 https://skimap.org/regions/view/187 [1]https://www.saminfo.com/archives/2020-2029/2024/may-2024/the-question-of-capacity https://www.saminfo.com/archives/2020-2029/2024/may-2024/the...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Sunday v. Stratton Could state law mitigate this? In essence, someone can certify themselves as an expert and thus waive liability for the resort? (I assume this would also void one's life insurance policy.)
- scythe 2y ago
  When I was a kid we would go skiing in Colorado and there were big signs near most of the major lifts describing the Colorado Ski Safety Act: https://donaldsonlaw.com/recreational-accident-attorney-denver/winter-sports-injuries/ski-safety-act/ https://donaldsonlaw.com/recreational-accident-attorney-denv... The signs at Breckenridge have mostly been taken down, as I recall. But the Act still exists.
- dmckeon 2y ago
  Many states[0] have explored this. IIRC, the New Mexico legislature once, back in the 1980s, helpfully defined alpine skiing as a "hyper-dangerous" activity, trying to place all liability on the skier, but a reference eludes my google-fu. [0] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/pa-supreme-court/1528129.html#footnote_15 https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/pa-supreme-court/1528129.h...
applied_heat 2y ago
While lift ticket prices have maybe doubled in the last 20 years, I am sure costs For the ski areas have more than doubled, like You said insurance, but also parts, labour,
bobthepanda 2y ago
There is also the issue of the massive migration to the Sunbelt. Once you have to take a plane to ski you shrink the market significantly. Where I am in Washington has seen massive population growth and the ski resorts have not kept up, but I have not heard anything about new ski areas opening in the state.
- Ichthypresbyter 2y ago

presentation 2y ago

Even if ski resorts followed every sustainable practice stringently it wouldn’t change much, wouldn’t it? It’s not like ski resorts are the drivers of climate change, or even that climate change is really what causes ski resorts to close.

caminante 2y ago
This is a weird paper. Optimizing sustainability won't save your resort. A few other commenters are complaining about lack of snow (climate change), but the real drivers are fundamentals (e.g. cost of leasing protected forests or grooming) and trends like younger generations wanting ski weekends over ski weeks. If you can't stay relevant, you perish.

paleotrope 2y ago

This is interesting. "In addition, at the time of research, there are five states (Alabama, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas) and two provinces (Northwest Territories and Prince Edward Island) with only 1 resort remaining. Details of state/province/territory data can be seen in Table 2." I found it hard to believe that Texas has a ski resort. I did some searching and I can't find any evidence that this is true. RI and Alabama both have one. Seems easy enough to check.

jghn 2y ago
I imagine "resort" is doing heavy lifting.
- paleotrope 2y ago
  Apparently the one in Alabama opened for the first time in 5 years recently. https://www.skimag.com/news/alabama-cloudmont-ski-resort-opens-for-first-time-in-5-years/ https://www.skimag.com/news/alabama-cloudmont-ski-resort-ope...
  - paleotrope 2y ago
    I wonder how much of this is just the fact that main ski resorts started when the 10th came home from WW2. Those guys ended up founding alot of these resorts. Areas in the backcountry, where the land was super cheap and they managed to get leases for them for pennies. Over time they became more commercial and less of a personal project. Plus these areas became more valuable because of the skiing and that priced out the locals, the people that actually worked the slopes. I think this story is way more complex then to point to climate change.
dbjacobs 2y ago
Mt Aggie, a synthetic ski slope is the only one in Texas I know of.

readthenotes1 2y ago

Also >65% of people in the US are overweight.

rascul 2y ago

> In addition, at the time of research, there are five states (Alabama, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas) and two provinces (Northwest Territories and Prince Edward Island) with only 1 resort remaining. Details of state/province/territory data can be seen in Table 2. The time of the research appears to be 2022. They only found one in Maryland? There's more... This data doesn't seem accurate, or they have a weird way of classifying resorts, or something. update Ok I misremembered. I got some of the states mixed up. Maryland may only have one, but Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia have several.

pjdesno 2y ago

I've always thought that there ought to be a way to create an investment fund specializing in East Coast ski resorts, Florida homeowners insurance, and other investments that are getting hammered by climate change, and advertise it on Fox News as being for investors who "are smart enough to know that climate change is fake" or something like that. Unfortunately it would probably be illegal, as it seems like a textbook example of pump and dump. Unrelated, the comments here bring up a good point - ski resorts have been supersized since the 60s, just like grocery stores and fast food portion sizes, so even though the loss of skiing is real, the number of resorts may be a lousy metric for it.

Gys 2y ago
> Unfortunately it would probably be illegal, as it seems like a textbook example of pump and dump. Why? You are not withholding information. In a pump and dump you do (you withhold telling them you want to sell early)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

iancmceachern 2y ago

My buddy and I have talked about this for decades, done the math. They're simply not profitable anymore. Too much seasonal skilled labor, too much making snow, etc.

deepfriedchokes 2y ago
The cost of living is going to kill leisure for a large portion of the working class.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  Not just leisure, but simple rights of life. Not good.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  It's called "Baumol's cost disease". Rising wages due to higher productivity are great for wage earners. Productivity growth isn't uniform though. A 2025 automated factory produces much more goods per worker than a 1925 factory. A 2025 barber doesn't cut hair much faster than a 1925 barber though. But wages tend to rise for the entire economy. So as productivity increases, labor for any sector that doesn't scale is going to become relatively more expensive. Ski resort labor doesn't scale. It's a first world problem.