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Maybe. Depending on their ability to accelerate depreciation and the terms of the lease agreements, they could be coming out OK. That said, their timing has been pretty awful as you note.

Good points, Tony. They also, unfairly IMHO, ding Killington. Now I love to rag on K-Mart as much as the next guy, but you can in fact enjoy the full 3000' vertical w/o resorting to endless traverses or skating. There is some enjoyable cruising between the base of Needles Eye and the last...

It's worth noting that the use of a material portion of your shareholders' capital to purchase a wind turbine or other form of alternative energy is an incredibly lousy use of the limited funds you'll have at your disposal. There are a LOT of ski areas out there, and none of them are cash cows...

I think you can take to the bank that there won't be any material expansion of Wildcat. Perhaps if it was in some far-flung corner of Forest Service land that no one would notice, they'd have a chance. However, being right across the street from the epicenter of the White Mtn National Forest...

I actually plunked down for three of these. Even if I only get in one day, that's pretty good value for one day of skiing these days. Really not much down side.

That's a lot different than your original statement, which was in fact incredibly naive. W/B is a fantastic business. The problem is that the private equity fund which bought its corporate parent paid too high of a price and funded everything with expensive debt. None of that has anything to...

I would think that Fortress has to be on the list to consider. High-elevation. Good snow. Close access to burgeoning Calgary off the Trans-Canada Hwy. Given the stated criteria, you're really looking at a small geographic area. Basically the Sierras (June? Terrain probably not good...

I haven't read through to the end of this thread yet, but this post bears responding to. You pointed out the recessions in 1980, 1990-ish, and 1999. The problem with those examples is that only one of them was the result of a real-estate bubble - the 1990-ish one. 1980 was a functioning of...

I'm most interested to see what plans, if any, they have for expansion. Rumor has it that they've long been sitting on permits to expand south to Green Mtn and, more tantalizingly, north to the true summit of Mt. Tecumseh. The former holds great cruising possibilities while the latter offers...

Sugarbush's two new lodges and new snowmaking trunk lines should be something of a game changer for them. For the first time since maybe the 50s, they'll have a full complement of world class base area facilities. Unfortunately, day care will still be next door in the Sugarbush Village (not to...

It's splitting hairs, but my guess is that the walkway is more for early season egress than access. I'd be surprised if they opened w/o a route from the Peak down to the Glades area via High Traverse or some such crossover. The walkway would enable you to walk back, though admittedly could be...

There's got to be a lot of real-estate acreage in that number b/c if you look at the historical acreage claims for Elk Meadows, it was 420. I'll believe that number to be much more accurate, as it was a skiing play then. While it's only an extra 275 vetical, that is equivalent to 30% - pretty...

I know you like to butt heads with Tony as if it's sport but, seriously? Brian Head is 50% larger by acreage, gets equivalent snow and has significantly longer continuous vertical. It also happens to be a much shorter drive to the closes major population center. Am I missing something?

Maybe taken the from Jackson? It looks very Vermont-y.

This is a shame. There appears to be some very good slackcountry terrain directly to the west of Slide Peak with fall lines far superior to those in-bounds (>1000' vert). It's a much tougher job to hoof it from the lower lifts.

And yet to apparently continue to not just read his posts, but comment on how long and tiring they are to get through. Interesting...

I love this passage in particular. Translation: we egregiously skimped on necessary maintenance on these lifts in previous years, leading to a massive build-up of deferred maintenance requirements that lead to lower reliability and may even have endangered guest safety in the interim for the...

I don't doubt that it ads brand cred, but to further your analogy, if AMC circa 1981 added a luxury sports car to its fleet of Gremlins and Pacers, I'm not sure it would have added much in the way of a halo effect. You've got to fix the underlying, very noticeable rot before any sort of halo...

Right, and IIRC it's also a bit of a monadnock - it kind of juts out on its own pretty far to the East of the rest of the terrain, so it's far from the ridgeline where you'd expect the best snows.

Agreed - it's failed everywhere in the States. Not sure why they think "it's different this time" If they were committed to increasing relevant capacity out of the base, I actually think they did the right things here (stupid bubble aside). There is a mid-station serving Lookout Mtn, which...