Squaw Valley’s Alex Cushing. photo: moonshineink.com
“It will be a tragedy for Tahoe if these ski visionaries’ creations are overridden by a legion of pencil pushers, business algorithms, and spreadsheets…”
Moonshine Ink’s David Bunker has written an article titled:
“Capitalism, Culture, and the Tahoe Ski Industry”
click the above link to read the article in its entirety.
Sugar Bowl’s Warren Hellman. photo: moonshineink.com
This article talks of our past ski pioneers and what they envisioned for Tahoe then reflects on Tahoe’s future direction and how it has nothing to do with what Tahoe deserves and everything to do with the current big business and how it is in the process of:
“stripping away our culture for the sake of a fistful of extra profit.”
here’s an excerpt from the article:
“The fear — and you can feel it almost palpably enveloping longtime Squaw skiers and residents in particular — is that this all changing in Tahoe.
Tahoe had been the product of ski pioneers like Alex Cushing, Warren Hellman, Dave McCoy, Dick Reuter, and Bud Klein — ski industry giants who did not treat skiing like an investment fund.
Cushing, for all his faults, was the type of stubborn iconoclast that made his life’s work the creation of a world-class mountain, not a money-making machine. You can look at Squaw’s haphazard lift pattern, majestic cable car route, and stunning High Camp location and know that Cushing was not creating the Amazon of ski areas. He most likely could have made millions more by engineering Squaw Valley into a resort that catered to middle-aged non-skiers. Instead, he worked tirelessly to create something authentic, distinct, and unique.”
All quotes are directly from David Bunker’s Moonshine Ink article. Full article here: “Capitalism, Culture, & the Tahoe Ski Industry.”
….. and now KSL will shit all over it and turn it into a wal mart of skiing. The same as all the other huge non distinguishable resorts. The shape of the mountains there are unique though, and that can not be marginalized by a few buildings at the bottom.
The Cushings mismanaged the hell out of Squaw, threw needless lifts all over the mountain, and defaced it with things like Gold Coast. Their stubborness and disregard for the environment are well documented… and visible in their condcension to locals. KSL comes in, joins Alpine and Squaw, and stops the condecention by putting a guy in who clearly cares what people think… even locals. All this bitching about KSL is harshing my mellow.
Not sure about KSL, particularly taking over local ski shops that had been there for years, but… I have to agree about the lifts. Squaw probably has the worst lift layout of any resort in the west. It’s like they got drunk one night and put a map of the mountain on a dart board, started chucking and just decided to go with that.
cushing kept the mountain open to memorial day everyday for skiing every year conditions allowed, will you still have such a hard on for ksl when they start closing the mountain in april? cushing shifted full time employees to seasonal positions in shitty years, ksl prefers to layoff anyone making over 10 an hour and employee kids who are first year employees. your fooling yourself if you think they care about skiing they only care about money. how was the resort is managed when it ran successfully for 50 years? there are reasons why some lifts are positioned in places they go beyond your assumptions on where you think they should start and stop. ksl is merely laying off all long term employees and keeping the Colorado/ northstar employees. oh yeah and they are losing shit loads of money. here is my prediction: they plan to build condos (like there isn’t enough housing for sale in tahoe now) and make short term money. in the end squaw will go bankrupt (like whistler), but they owners ceos etc will make money and they people who will lose money is is the people of ca and Washington who have their pension funds invested in ksl, because that is how the investment risk is structured. if fire pits and cutting out smoking will make more people ski at squaw how come squaw had way more skiers in the 80′s then now. the industry trend of the last 30 years has clearly driven more people away from skiing as less people are skiing now.
Head of nail….meet hammer
Hammer….meet head of nail
I work at Squaw. Every year we get a measly 30 cent raise. Now that KSL took over, no more raises. I’m one of the few locals that wasn’t fired when they took over. I’ll be quitting soon. Having Squaw and Alpine combined is nice, but at what cost to the locals??
Vail resorts gave a 2% raise last year and they have fantastic snowmaking too, and they do have lots of middle aged people stay away from the black runs. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if small valley take all these old people’s money and still leave the gnarly blacks to us?
and another 2% next year, so forth and so on.
Since when did Norcal become NorKorea?
knowing this is the prevailing mood for decent people in the region what do ksl and their henchmen do to allay people’s fears? Nothing,notta,gooseegg, zilch. I suppose it’s just how businesses evolve but it is gross
AWirth hands out cookies…
Yeah, after seeing all those people this last weekend, and during The Christmas holidays, and all the weekends during December, all KSL employees deserve raises. . . .I guess the weed still grows strong when the snow doesn’t fall
You didn’t get your raise? I work at Alpine and the day I received my first check, I was told by a supervisor that KLS decided that my position was over paid and my hourly rate was to be cut 15% compared to last year when JMA owned the resort. My actual boss never bothered to broach the subject, guess that person thought I wouldn’t notice or that I didn’t deserve the courtesy of an explanation. Just to put this in perspective, this is not a basic position nor is it an essential salaried position. Just one of the many jobs that are nonessential profit centers that involve daily interaction with the thousands of people who allow these resorts to exist. Not important enough to pay the person doing it a living wage. Just my two cents (sorry, I just checked my pocket, make that 1.7 cents)
Man, that is fucked up. And then they wonder why the employees all “have an attitude”. Such a shame what is happening in Tahoe right now.
at least quote the article accurately.
wow man , vote liberal man, what happened man, keep tahoe blue man and save the trees man…..bush is so stupid man. see what happens when your stoned 24/7,,, life passes you bye
i am not a local – a regular – I come to squaw every weekend. So far i am ok. I am worried when they say that the mountain is to become more accessible to the begginer/intermediate skier. What on earth do they plan on mowing down to make it easier?