jasoncapecod
Well-known member
i thought i would change the title to a more realistic #
How will ski areas fare with 5.00/gallon gas
- Thread starter jasoncapecod
- Start date
EMSC
Well-known member
I find it unlikely that all ski areas will decreases in skier visits. True destination resorts might well see a significant increase in visits; though a good portion of that increase will be for Europeans, Canadians, Mexicans, etc... for whom the US is a very, very cheap destination right now.
I don't understand how snowmaking should be affected by gasoline prices. Snowmaking uses lots of electricity, which, while increasing slightly, has not doubled or tripled in cost. It is Grooming and shuttle bus operations that will cost ski areas dramatically more $$. Little areas might cut the # of runs or frequency of grooming operations. Big guys will either eat the cost for one year (while they wait out the US slowdown) or will raise pricing (not too likely until the US economy starts to gain steam).
Food is also going to be more expensive, but I would expect most ski areas will simply raise pricing to cover that cost ($1 increase in a $10 burger is a lot less noticeable than $1 increase to a $3 burger at McDonalds). I would expect more brown baggers at ski areas as some skiing segments will use that as a partial offset to spending more on gas.
I do expect a lot more decisions like Sharon's described though. Do I ski GP this weekend, or do I spend a lot of $ to go to Vermont. (In my case, ski Eldora, or even Vail, or drive all over the SW to Taos, Wolf Creek, or etc...).
Related to the cost for new entrants, is making someone believe that they are a 'skier'. What the Colo pass wars has done to/for a lot of folks. If I buy a pass - even if using it only a handful of times a winter - I think of myself as a 'skier'. If I drive up & buy a ticket a couple times a winter, I think of/define myself as something else that I do/like - but a person who occasionally might go skiing. Thus part of my support for the cut rate pass business model. It is so much more self supporting for the long term than the 'we're expensive and only for the elites' pass model.
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
I don't understand how snowmaking should be affected by gasoline prices. Snowmaking uses lots of electricity, which, while increasing slightly, has not doubled or
Gas is already $5.00 / gallon in Quebec once you convert the price we pay in litres. :shock: Glad we had a amazing local powder ski season as didn't have to go far, just go out and hike the local hills for deep powder and pretend your on Mansfield 
Hope we don't have to wait another 30 years for snow like this again .
Hope we don't have to wait another 30 years for snow like this again .berkshireskier
Active member
If gas does go to $5.00 per gallon in the near future, any industry (including the ski industry) that relies on discretionary consumer spending is going to get hurt. Jason is right about ski areas. They do use a large amount of fuel other than electricity. The marketing director at the small ski area where I mostly ski in the wintertime told me that they have one employee whose only job is to fill the generators (that run the compressors that run the snowmaking system) with diesel fuel - when they are running the snowmaking system at full capacity, by the time he gets done filling up the last generator, he has to start at the first one again. Also, they use fuel to run the snow cats, snowmobiles, trucks to plow the parking lots and some sort of fuel to heat the lodges, in addition to the large amounts of electricity to run the snowmaking system and lifts (does anyone not believe that electricity prices will be going up too along with other energy costs??) I hate to be pessimistic, but I think the ski industry is in for a rough patch, unless energy prices come down and the economy improves.
£1.12 a blinking litre = $2.18 US
1 liters = 0.26 U.S. gallons
Someone can check my math, but I think that means more than $8 a gallon.
Admin's 13 mpg guzzler wouldn't be my choice in Aberdeen.
:wink:
1 liters = 0.26 U.S. gallons
Someone can check my math, but I think that means more than $8 a gallon.
Admin's 13 mpg guzzler wouldn't be my choice in Aberdeen.
:wink:
I did a round trip to North Creek and back...up Fri night, back Saturday night to do some chores up there. The tank I bought down here in NJ on Friday was the first gas I bought since I came back from the mountains on April 10.
I took my wife's Civic, as I had little to carry, and no need for AWD. The small tank, and the high mileage really take some of the sting out of it. About $55 to drive 625, if you only count the cost of gas. One big bonus was that I only had to fill up once in New York State. (NJ is about $3.50/gal and NY is around $3.85.)
I'll figure the mileage today on the second tank when I fill it again. (The deal for taking Mrs. Harvey's car was leaving it full.) First tank was 40 almost exactly. Second tank was higher, with no traffic, driving at night.
So the point is...skiers need smaller, fuel efficient AWD vehicles with some carrying space. Comon automakers....let's see something like this, available in the US:
http://www.fiat.co.uk/Showroom/#showroo ... x4/explore
I took my wife's Civic, as I had little to carry, and no need for AWD. The small tank, and the high mileage really take some of the sting out of it. About $55 to drive 625, if you only count the cost of gas. One big bonus was that I only had to fill up once in New York State. (NJ is about $3.50/gal and NY is around $3.85.)
I'll figure the mileage today on the second tank when I fill it again. (The deal for taking Mrs. Harvey's car was leaving it full.) First tank was 40 almost exactly. Second tank was higher, with no traffic, driving at night.
So the point is...skiers need smaller, fuel efficient AWD vehicles with some carrying space. Comon automakers....let's see something like this, available in the US:
http://www.fiat.co.uk/Showroom/#showroo ... x4/explore
J.Spin
New member
I've written some comments about Bolton Valley before, but now we’ve skied our second season there and I’ll add a few more impressions in the context of this thread. I think you’re right in that concerns about gas are going to be minimal for many people that are frequenting Bolton, because they are locals living in the Chittenden/Washington County areas. As a somewhat central reference point in the Burlington area, the resort is only about 30 minutes from Burlington International Airport (21.5 miles, 35 minutes by MapQuest). Anyone highly concerned about the cost of fuel for that distance (perhaps a gallon each way) probably wouldn’t be spending the money to ski anyway. But, as I think back on scenes from this season, I now realize that there were a lot of out of state license plates in the parking lots. If I was to put a number on the proportion of out of state plates I would typically see as I walked around, it’s got to be at least 25%, or even more at times. When I asked my wife what she thought the percentage of out of state plates was at Bolton, she came up with a rough guess of 25% as well . It seems strange to say this because I’ve always thought of Bolton as a local’s mountain, but I guess that’s not entirely the case. I’ve known since last season that there are various groups of people who come from afar to stay at Bolton for a ski week and perhaps do other activities at the resort, but I guess I hadn’t thought much about weekend visitors. Coincidentally, our friends Dave and Lori (who live in Boston) bought Bolton Valley season passes this spring that gave them the rest of the ‘07-‘08 season, as well as all of the ‘08-‘09 season. Dave used to be an instructor at Bolton and likes the area, and in their case there’s the added incentive of having a place to stay whenever they come up. But, they’re still an example of people coming up from Boston to ski at Bolton, so I guess there must be others. Thus it’s likely that Bolton could feel some affects of increased travel costs if regional visitors decide to drive less, although perhaps not to the degree of some of the larger local resorts that may get an even higher percentage of their visitors from out of state.Harvey44":22zvtb5m said:
With regard to the whole ski area viability theme in this thread, I’ve done some thinking about Bolton Valley because it has definitely had its difficulties in the past. During the 90s, it seemed to be the least viable of any of the substantial ski areas surrounding Burlington. It even closed down for a season or two back then (that was great for earning turns in the powder, but not for making the resort any money), it changed owners a few times, and just couldn’t seem to make it anymore. I can totally understand why. Bolton Valley was actually the first place I ever went downhill skiing as a kid, and it was fun, but we generally wouldn’t go there for a day of skiing when you could go an extra 15 minutes and be at a bigger place like Sugarbush, Mad River Glen or Stowe. We would often just go there for night skiing, or a day trip here or there when things came together to make it the destination of choice. I know all my friends were of the similar mind, so I’m sure many other people were as well. There may have been some bad business decisions, neglect, poor snow years, and other factors that played into the financial issues, but if the skiers were coming, I don’t think things would have lapsed the way they did. I wasn’t in Vermont much for the ‘01-‘02 to ‘05-‘06 ski seasons, but it seems that Bob Fries certainly worked his magic on Bolton once he bought it in 2002. It really feels like the resort is back on its feet based on the numbers of skiers I see out on the mountain and the vibe that’s there.
There’s no question that the marketing and money spent on infrastructure had an effect on bringing people back to the mountain, but I also wonder if part of Bolton’s apparent resurgence and viability is due to changes in skiing trends. The popularity of backcountry skiing seems to be exploding now. Certainly around here, many advanced skiers are starting to go with alpine touring bindings as their primary ski bindings instead of standard alpine bindings. With Bolton’s large area of backcountry terrain and well-established backcountry/Nordic trail network, people may see it as an attractive place to start exploring the backcountry with or without the aid of lifts. Even people’s preference for in bounds terrain seems to have shifted a bit from what it was 10-15 years ago. I can still remember back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when we would have to do our tree skiing somewhat covertly because many areas didn’t allow it or at least didn’t promote it. You never knew if you were going to get in trouble for being in the trees. We did a lot more of our skiing on trails, skied a lot more moguls etc. Now, the ski areas around here seem to be generally in support of boundary to boundary, and even out of bounds skiing. These trends may have been good for Bolton, as they don’t have as much alpine trail acreage as some of the bigger resorts, but that difference diminishes somewhat when you take into account the tree skiing and backcountry options. The whole terrain park popularity may also be a positive trend for Bolton Valley, as you don’t necessarily need to be the biggest mountain around for that to work.
I’m not sure what it means in terms of resort finances, but there was a pretty good jump in season pass price this season. The early bird price for Bolton Valley season pass renewals was $424/adult for ‘08-‘09 vs. $299/adult for ‘07-’08. I think the $299 for last season was probably some sort of special, because we paid in the $350 range for our ’06-’07 season passes. Since we had just moved back from Montana that summer we didn’t get our passes until the fall and may have missed the very earliest price specials, so there may have been a slightly lower spring rate or a rate for current pass holders like we got this year. Anyway, the price for passes this season felt like a bit of a jump. Perhaps they find they can make a bigger price jump after a decent season like we had, or maybe they need more money. From what Fries said in one of his interviews, it sounds like the resort had just about turned the corner back to profitability even with the bad start to the ski season in ’06-’07, so ’07-’08 may have really been the breakthrough year. It will be interesting to hear about profits for this season and follow the resort’s progress over the next few years to see if they can continue the positive trend they’ve been experiencing. Hopefully the high price of gas won’t be too much of a detriment in this regard.
People have mentioned in this thread that along with travel, snowmaking could be another area where high fuel costs affect ski resorts. In my option, if the cost of fuel for snowmaking becomes a huge factor in Bolton Valley’s business, I think they’ve got the snowfall to rely a lot more on Mother Nature if they really had to (akin to what Mad River Glen does). This is the way all of Bolton’s Nordic/backcountry trails are run anyway. Granted those trails see a lot less traffic than the alpine trails, but minimal snowmaking was basically the way they started this season. There was enough snow by the time their season really got going, that it was as if they skipped the usual snowmaking window. That’s not going to happen every year, but they actually had a somewhat conscious role in how that played out. I was told by one of the employees that they purposefully opened the slopes a bit later (early December) this past season than they did the prior season (Thanksgiving timeframe) to avoid having to spend the money on making all the artificial snow. They’re not one of the big resorts that are expected to open in November every year, so maybe they can get away with it. They eventually did make snow on various slopes later in the season (and a lot for the terrain park) but it sort of felt like a bonus aside from some real need on a couple of the steep, wind-scoured slopes. I would be happy to wait for lift-served skiing until the mountain could be opened on natural snow anyway, as the appeal of skiing on a few manmade ribbons of snow in the early season is a lot less than it used to be for me. In my mind if snowmaking is required to provide a skiing surface, the conditions aren’t quite what I’m looking for anyway (although getting a deep base on some trails can still be important, even if your preference is for natural snow). I know there are many other folks at Bolton with preferences like mine, but even there I suspect there might not be enough to support the area. If they had to close during a period of low snow because they hadn’t made enough of it on key terrain, it might not go over well with families that had paid for the kids programs etc. But, an early/mid December to early April season wouldn’t be too hard to support without snowmaking in most years.
J.Spin
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
I saw that too.. It's about time someone woke up. When gas is 7 next year i 'm sure the us automakers will be selling a bunch of denali's and expeditions.
I presume this is Subaru's niche at the moment. Thus Adam's new WRX. It gets about the same mileage (21-25) as his/our well-worn (~200K miles) 1995 Nissan Maxima. I'm driving the latter to work for a couple more months before we sell it.
Sharon
New member
I work in our county planning department. Some of the planners here are putting together a presentation about the rising fuel costs, global warming, alternative energy choices and what we can do to conserve fuel, and reduce emissions.
One of the pieces of information that was dug up in the research was the projection that gas will increase in price $1 per gallon per year for the next 10 years. At the rate it is presently going, this is quite likely.
We may want to change the title of this thread to $10/gallon :evil:
I'm already considering buying a scooter or motorcycle to commute to work. I only have a 10 mile commute which is bike-able, but the hills are huge and it would take me a long time to ride a bicycle home, but I am considering biking when the weather is good. But what I really need is a very efficient AWD vehicle to get up my driveway and to take me to skiing in the winter. I am uncertain about getting a motorbike up my steep gravel drive. The most efficient AWD vehicle was the Toyota Matrix (30-35mpg), but they stopped making it with the AWD. Now there are not many options besides the Subaru. I get 25 mpg avg with mine (24 in town and 27 highway). I have the old Legacy with the 2.2 liter engine, which gets a little better than the Outbacks...which is why I chose to buy the older model than the newer one with the 2.5 liter engine.
I hope to drive my Subaru another 100k miles, and by that time, I am hopeful that I will be able to purchase a more efficient AWD vehicle. By then, maybe the plug-ins will be available. Wondering if any will have AWD.
One of the pieces of information that was dug up in the research was the projection that gas will increase in price $1 per gallon per year for the next 10 years. At the rate it is presently going, this is quite likely.
We may want to change the title of this thread to $10/gallon :evil:
I'm already considering buying a scooter or motorcycle to commute to work. I only have a 10 mile commute which is bike-able, but the hills are huge and it would take me a long time to ride a bicycle home, but I am considering biking when the weather is good. But what I really need is a very efficient AWD vehicle to get up my driveway and to take me to skiing in the winter. I am uncertain about getting a motorbike up my steep gravel drive. The most efficient AWD vehicle was the Toyota Matrix (30-35mpg), but they stopped making it with the AWD. Now there are not many options besides the Subaru. I get 25 mpg avg with mine (24 in town and 27 highway). I have the old Legacy with the 2.2 liter engine, which gets a little better than the Outbacks...which is why I chose to buy the older model than the newer one with the 2.5 liter engine.
I hope to drive my Subaru another 100k miles, and by that time, I am hopeful that I will be able to purchase a more efficient AWD vehicle. By then, maybe the plug-ins will be available. Wondering if any will have AWD.
One thing I have read is that electric motors and AWD go well together. One design I saw had a smaller electric motor driving each wheel. A micro chip controls the slip/grip. It actually weighs less with no trans axle and the ICE (gas motor) is only for producing electricity. Not sure how feasible, but a cool idea. Sorry I couldn't find a link.
Harvey44":1tv20kqy said:
That's actually my understanding of how diesel railroad locomotives work, with the diesel engine merely generating electricity for motors that drive each wheel. I further understand that this is due to an electric motor's ability to more efficiently generate higher torque levels.
presumably that's the reason that Tesla electric sports car is supposed to have such scorching acceleration with a 2-speed transmission.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, fuel prices are finally getting to the point that alternative technonlogies are getting some serious investment. But like most consumers I'll be inclined to wait and see which one works best before committing my own $.
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
unfortunately I think Sharon might be right.
I think one tropical system in the gulf this summer could send the price of fuel spiraling out of control.
Might be a good time to dabble in oil futures.