Where to Ski and Live: Do Aesthetics Matter?

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
Unless you?re a BC hardcore who avoids lifts, human intervention in the mountains for skiers is a given, whether it?s a t-bar, a chair, a mid-mountain lodge, or a base village. When you?re thinking about places to ski and/or live, in addition to the usual quantifiable criteria that we?re always going on about -- acreage, vertical, steepness, snow conditions, skier density, etc. -- how many of you consider aesthetics to be a major factor in your decision? By that, I guess I mean the vibe, personality, or sense of place that people have created in a town or ski area -- and whether it feels authentic and organic or phony and forced.

I got thinking about this during my trip last week to northern Vermont. Whenever I?m in VT, I really like the whole New England vibe that surrounds the ski areas up there. In addition to genuine East Coast terrain at places like MRG, Jay, Sugarbush, Stowe, and Smuggs, you have a location that was a real place before a ski area was put in, regional architecture, authentic farming culture, no chain restaurants, atmospheric lodging, etc. The Eastern Townships in Quebec are especially interesting in that they mix northeastern skiing with French-Canadian culture and New England building styles. There are also cool state-owned places like Whiteface, Gore, Belleayre, and Cannon with zero base development, and nothing within eyeshot but nice scenery.

The East does have its eyesores and destination skier hotspots -- Killington, Okemo, Mount Snow, and Tremblant come to mind. -- but to me, they?re in the minority.

Western U.S.
IMO, things are hit or miss out west. For me, Northern New Mexico (Taos, Santa Fe, Pajarito) is the best example of a western region that mixes skiing and local culture similar to the way New England does. Haven?t been back in 20 years, but I remember Crested Butte and Telluride as being interesting places. Lake Louise and Sunshine, with their locations in a highly regulated national park (a very small mid-mountain village at SSV and zilch at LL), are really beautiful too.

To look at a different case, as great as the whole SLC experience can be snow- and terrain-wise -- and it is convenient to have a decent-sized ?city? so close to that much great skiing with inexpensive hotels, easy access, and so on -- the tradeoff is that your headquarters is basically a sprawling suburban metro area (unless you stay on-mountain) or a tourist town with lots of condos and trophy homes (Park City). Haven?t been to Powder Mountain yet, but Sundance was my aesthetic favorite -- the one ski area that actually made me feel like I was in Utah. A lowkey base structure and very cool summit lodge (with environmentally friendly toilets, natch), and even though there are homes and condos, they don?t assault your eyes.

Austria
I can?t speak for Italy, Switzerland or France (which is supposed to have the highest percentage of godawful ski architecture anywhere) as I?ve never skied in those countries, but I can tell you that Austria is amazing in the way it combines skiing with great atmosphere. If you?ve never been, you really have to check it out. Cute villages that have been there for centuries, on-mountain cow barns that have been converted into cafes, bars, and restaurants, traveling to different villages on skis, etc. Even a week in the Kitzbühel Alps -- a region serious skiers might avoid because it?s considered the Austrian equivalent of the East Coast due to lower elevation -- was absolutely worth the trip.

A year ago in Lech, I ran into these Vermont dirtbags (their description, not mine) who came to the Arlberg with a bunch of ?MRG: Ski It If You Can? stickers that they were going to plaster on lift towers. But once they got to the ?Vatican of the Ski World,? as they called it, they shelved the idea, realizing that it would be the ultimate sacrilege? similar to someone coming to Vermont and bombing the single chair with Deer Valley stickers.

I don?t want to catalogue every ski area and give it a grade on atmospherics, but I?m curious to know where people stand on this issue, or if it?s even an issue. Can you go to a place, which, despite its positive sides, might have visually unappealing manmade elements -- for example: Vail (faux Tirol), Snowbird (feels like 1970s France), Deer Valley (parts of it are like skiing through a high-end subdivision), or Les Ménuires (known among Brits as ?Les Manures?) -- and block out stimuli you don?t like and concentrate on the skiing?

I?ve managed to do it to a certain extent, but it isn?t the same feeling as when the aesthetics part clicks too. Of course, it?s all subjective -- who?s to say what?s authentic? -- and everything?s in the eye of the beholder. The fact that all of the resorts above are highly successful may indicate that aesthetics are irrelevant or not overly important to many people.
 

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Aesthetics play into my thinking when I'm daydreaming about places I'd like to visit or live. I thought the same thing about Vail Village first time I visited, which was in summer (and wrote so in a newspaper travel piece). But when I went back a few years later to snowboard, I didn't much care. I just wanted to get on the hill. Aside from that, I like the widescreen look to greater Vail, even if a major interstate is parked nearby.
 
Interesting topic, and one that deserves much comment, even though I'm generally on the opposite side of the argument.

I do know why I'm on the opposite side though. Nearly all of the "atmospheric" places date from far before the era of skiing for historical reasons. Aspen, Crested Butte, Telluride got built because that's where the silver was. The mountains were irrelevant and the snow was a nuisance back then. Since the atmosphere predated the skiing, when skiing came the local population in some instances decided to preserve the atmosphere, sometimes with unintended consequences. Aspen is Exhibit A, zealously preserved for 25+ years, resulting in a severe affordability issue for locals.

I agree in the aesthetic appeal of Crested Butte, but I think the Muellers have their work cut out for them marketing a remote, expert hill with less than abundant snow. Back in the 1960's when skiing was growing by leaps and bounds, CB should have developed its ski hill in nearby Gothic or Kebler Pass where there was 50% more snow. Taos/Santa Fe snow reliability is somewhat better than CB, but like Mt. Bachelor they will remain regional resorts because there is not that much on-the-hill lodging, which is what most American destination skiers want. In the towns of Taos and Santa Fe, it's quite obvious they want to preserve the local culture and aesthetics.

In North America the places with the best combinations of snow and terrain (top 4 IMHO Snowbird, Whistler, Mammoth, Vail) were built from scratch more recently because a passionate ski enthusiast (Dave McCoy, Pete Siebert, Dick Bass) saw the natural attributes and made it happen. Snowbird copied the French because it was in an avalanche zone. McCoy and Siebert had little influence over how their towns grew. For multisport enthusiasts, Bend is the modern, explosive growth counterpart to historic New Mexico. But again, Bend has the growth because the sport offerings are generally better and more varied.

FTO fanatic skiers who are focused most on the ski experience are likely to be drawn mainly to the snow and terrain for a destination ski week. But if you're actually going to live in a resort town year round, or even 4 months a year, I would agree that you should take other factors into account besides the skiing. And we all know that many people are less single minded in what they want out of a ski vacation.

At the NASJA session on real estate development, one questioner cited your exact point about the attractiveness of Austria. Neither panelist had been there, but one noted that "Skiing is Austria's national sport. It's like the NFL and NASCAR combined here." Thus he speculated that the people and government may be willing to direct policy (requiring small, family owned and operated hotels) and spend what it takes to develop ski areas in the way they want. I later talked to the questioner, and he said that the culture of ski vacationers is different over there. Their affluent skiers would rather spend money to stay in a small historic boutique hotel than "invest" in a condo or trophy home. FYI in Taos Ski Valley the St. Bernard Hotel is run by 73-year-old ski school director Jean Meyer exactly like the historic places in Austria. The rest of TSV is redeveloping in the upscale condo/fractional ownership model so common here in the U.S.
 
jamesdeluxe":28rffbj9 said:
When you?re thinking about places to ski and/or live, in addition to the usual quantifiable criteria that we?re always going on about -- acreage, vertical, steepness, snow conditions, skier density, etc. -- how many of you consider aesthetics to be a major factor in your decision? By that, I guess I mean the vibe, personality, or sense of place that people have created in a town or ski area -- and whether it feels authentic and organic or phony and forced.
Interesting question but too many sub-issues have been lumped together, IMO. Aesthetics, Sense of Place, People, and the town itself I would separate out and then separate out again depending if you are discussing a place to ski frequently or a location to live.

In so far as selecting which ski areas to frequent, the aesthetics of the mountain play a large role for myself. I love mountains in the east such as Mad River Glen, Cannon, Jay, Magic, Saddleback, Burke Wildcat, etc. Places where the mountain is the main draw, not much if any slopeside, and not looked upon as a destination mountain (Jay although a destination mountain is very remote with no major build up in the area aside from a few slopeside condos... almost as little development as Mad River Glen in many respects actually... look up and down the App Gap next time you are riding the Single and pay attention when heading up the access road... Mad River Glen is more developed along the access road than most think...).

People go hand in hand with type of mountain, so you tend to find similar minded ski areas at places that have the mountain as the main draw instead of amenities and resort items. I tend not to enjoy places as much when I notice everyone at the resort is wearing and skiing 100% brand new current season gear even though they are wedge turning or barely able to parallel. I have vanity in skiing well and looking decent, but that money laden "gotta look good and have the latest gear" for the five days folks go skiing is crazy.

I find the comment "whether it feels authentic and organic or phony and forced" extremely ironic when discussing Vermont towns. Many of the most iconic Vermont ski towns are very phony, IMO. Although I did not think that way until I moved to Vermont. Towns like Waitsfield, Warren, Stowe, etc. are not traditional and classic Vermont towns, they are money towns developed around the ski areas they service (though that is a recent development taking into account the time frames the ski resorts developed compared to the time line of the town). They portray an iconic image that many guests believe is traditional, iconic, and classic Vermont, but real Vermont is usually the next town over on the border where all the resort employees live (Morrisville, Plainsfield, Wolcott, Hardwick, etc.). Many folks seem to think the new development at Sugarbush South is classic VT. Well, it is sure better than a Best Western box, but it is an iconic image, not traditional and real Vermont. Not that I don't mind a really sharp looking building with architectural inspiration from traditional iconic images, mind you. But I don't see that as authentic. It is hard to see anything about a ski resort as authentic to a local area that is depressed economically except for the business closest to the resort. A lot of the tourism industry shows how people want to see Vermont, not what Vermont really is.

My observations and studies suggest that Vermont has a huge identity problem. Part of the problem is the images and icons it sells to tourists are not the true lay of the land but manufactured pockets where tourism dollars run deep. I don't see these towns as authentic so would actually rank places like Stowe, Waitsfield, Warren, etc. pretty low on desirable places to live, especially considering how high prices are in these towns for land and goods.

Any ways, sorry that was not the most well thought out post, but been meaning to make that motion for a while and this seemed like a good topic to do so.
 
Telluride: perfect iconic analogy to what Riverc0il describes in Vermont. But consider the alternative, as described in the history we learned at NASJA 2004. When the last mine closed in the 1950's, in its remote location at the end of a dirt road at 8,700 feet, Telluride was going to become a ghost town if it had not been developed for skiing. By now it does pretty well as a summer resort too. And most would agree that it has the best natural aesthetics of Colorado resorts.

The resort developers do have a point. The aesthetics and environment are usually better served when the economy is based upon tourism that when its was based on timber, mining or agriculture. I believe that Vermont was almost completely deforested in the 18th-19th centuries.
 
riverc0il":2ia4zoyc said:
Many of the most iconic Vermont ski towns are very phony, IMO. Although I did not think that way until I moved to Vermont. Towns like Waitsfield, Warren, Stowe, etc. are not traditional and classic Vermont towns, they are money towns developed around the ski areas they service (though that is a recent development taking into account the time frames the ski resorts developed compared to the time line of the town). They portray an iconic image that many guests believe is traditional, iconic, and classic Vermont, but real Vermont is usually the next town over on the border where all the resort employees live (Morrisville, Plainsfield, Wolcott, Hardwick, etc.).

Give me a little credit, mate, I'm in the experiential marketing business. :wink:

Of course, any tourist region is built upon manufactured iconic imagery, because destination visitors probably wouldn't want to stay where the resort employees live (oddly enough, on my trip last week, I spent the night at a friend's place in Morrisville). Tourism is all about creating an idealized image, a "brand" if you will, that visitors willingly consume.

I'm aware that I'm playing into this process when I come up and stay at a "rustic" B&B in Waitsfield, eat waffles with local maple syrup, ride on the single chair at MRG, etc. It's the same thing as what I said about Taos, Santa Fe, Sundance, or even Austria -- it's all manufactured. I'm just saying that I like the Vermont branding better than the generic Intrawest version, which is pretty widespread throughout the western ski regions because there were no towns or settlements earlier.

When I mentioned in my Sugarbush TR that the new base village looked "classically Vermont"... of course, they're creating a phony picture postcard that visitors want to see. But I prefer that postcard to the 70s nightmare it replaced.

The other end of the spectrum is a place like Kicking Horse BC, where the ski resort is near a village that's basically nothing more than a truck stop... where the biggest event every week is when a new posse of strippers arrives from Vancouver. It's real alright... ask anyone who's been there: real depressing. Until they transform Golden into something a place whose reality is a bit more palatable to visitors, all they have to offer is the mountain, which, as Tony has noted, has pretty volatile snowfall figures.
 
We be on the same page, as I much prefer VT iconic/romanticized inspired aesthetics versus corporate mega resort style. That rant had been brewing for a while, your thread idea just brought it out ;)
 
I guess part of this thread is a rebuttal to creating a methodology for skiers to decide where to live or take trips. As my occasional :lol: potshots at Tony make clear, formulas based on "secular" numbers only tell part of the story.

The Northeast loses in practically every objective category, but in my subjective POV, intangibles like atmosphere need to be considered. To use a baseball analogy, the northeast is the Boston Red Sox, the proud second-place team with a big heart playing in an old but tradition-rich stadium, and the western U.S. is the New York Yankees -- the crew with a winning tradition, a bigger budget, a larger venue, better marketing, and a more profitable market niche.

As we've already concluded, aesthetics (and I'm using that as an umbrella term for a bunch of different things) are unquantifiable so they're not right or wrong. It's like pornography: I know atmosphere when I see it or experience it, even if it was dreamed up or enhanced by some marketing guy.

And while most people don't care about it, it's a dealbreaker for me.

Just sayin'.
 
Just want to pop in here to say something, not anything worthwhile on topic, but rather to commend all participating thus far for an excellent discussion. Kudos, James, for starting this gem.
 
jamesdeluxe":alb2fdts said:
Hey you two, stop gunking up this thread with your numerology.
:x
:lol:

I need to find a methodology to sum this up. :wink:

Seriously, I can't keep track...I haven't read anything.

I'm always amazed that people like Tony, james, River etc have time to look and participate in a number of board and contribute greatly to them. :shock:

My ski forum time is mostly here and ZS, the rest account maybe for less than 5% of my time.

How do you do it guys?

Now back to regular programing. :wink:

Kudos, James, for starting this gem.

I totally agree with Admin, kudos James.
 
jamesdeluxe wrote:
Hey you two, stop gunking up this thread with your numerology.
:x

I agree, so I moved those posts to the other "Where to Live" thread. My point was that the topic of this thread is unquantifiable.
 
Patrick":3lrtbsta said:
I'm always amazed that people like Tony, James, River etc have time to look and participate in a number of board and contribute greatly to them. :shock:

My ski forum time is mostly here and ZS, the rest account maybe for less than 5% of my time.

How do you do it guys?

Patrick is inferring that the three of us need to get a life.

This coming from someone who drove four hours each way to ski Waterville Valley.
:lol:
 
jamesdeluxe":346cm9yx said:
This coming from someone who drove four hours each way to ski Waterville Valley.
:lol:

FIVE HOURS each way...from Ottawa, but the previous day I was at Tremblant. :wink:
 
When I was visiting admin in SLC, we agreed that Patrick's level of addiction was even worse than ours, as evidenced by many examples like the one jamesdeluxe mentions.

Due to time constraints I have been mostly absent from EpicSki the last 3 months.
 
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