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.”