Park City and Deer Valley look miserable over the holidays

This is the first thread where kingslug explained his setup. Prior posts implied a strong connection to Park City but it’s clear now that’s just for the instructor job.

Kingslug’s collection of passes demonstrates that he’s quite aware of the snow reliability disparities in Utah and that there are not infrequent early seasons where Alta is head and shoulders above anyone else. The MC gives him extra free days at Snowbird and half price after that. That will pay off in late season when Snowbird is usually the best, and after mid-April the only choice.
 
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I saw that WSJ article. Not a good month for Vail.
LINK Hopefully, this gift article link works.

Also, I saw that:
  • Breckenridge lifties staged a sick day protest due to heat/plumbing issues in employee housing—which impacted lift operations.
  • Crested Butte Lift Maintenance workers may strike.
  • Keystone Ski Patrol is in contentious negotiations with Vail Resorts - similar to the Park City incident.
That's bad when you have to monitor which ski operations group might strike.
 
In one of the previous links, it said that while Vail skier numbers are clearly down, profits are up. Despite all their mewling about "guest experience," aren't profits all that truly matters to a big corporation and if yes, why would they sack the CEO?
 
jamesdeluxe said:
In one of the previous links, it said that while Vail skier numbers are clearly down, profits are up. Despite all their mewling about "guest experience," aren't profits all that truly matters to a big corporation and if yes, why would they sack the CEO?
Click to expand...
I have not paid any attention to Vail Inc numbers for several years despite living 10min from their HQ (and in an industry I love). So I have no real answer, but can only guess that Kingslug has part of the answer; but also it's possible that while growing, they are not growing fast enough relative to other investable companies. Or perhaps not growing fast enough to cover both profits and the debt load. Not sure what current debt load is, but I know Vail has an above average debt load which is the opposite of the historically successful method of investing in ski biz - to keep debt fairly low...
 
jamesdeluxe said:

www.powder7.com

Requiem for a Ski Town: Is ski culture dead?

The Park City Ski Patrol strike was just a microcosm. Sure, the patrollers won. But here's what's really going on.
www.powder7.com www.powder7.com

Click to expand...
I feel like the items in that article have been discussed ad nauseum for at least the past 10-15 years or more. I very much didn't believe his math at the start of the article and he is certainly off. The $40K 1977 condo would be going for ~$209K today just via generic inflation (he claims only $110K today). Certainly still no match for today's real prices, but still that's a bad way to introduce yourself to knowledgeable readers be so far off.

There are so many reasons ski towns have inflated way faster than generic and it's not just 'rich people bad'. Limited land, limited private/buildable land, nimby-ism, etc... have had a huge effect on supply too. Some of those are real constraints, some self imposed. Either way I've never seen any popular place/item/event/etc... ever have prices do anything but skyrocket when supply is severely limited. Maybe the ski towns should have approved a dense core with 20 story towers? Only half kidding as that is the kind of thing it would take to accommodate all the demand in some resorts. And if supply had been done in a timely fashion it certainly would have kept home price inflation much lower. But so much consternation of 'now that I'm here and it's so cute no one can change anything in the entire region let alone my town...' Guarantees a lot of issues will surface over time. Which is not to say that the big industry players don't have any blame. Just pointing out that the ski towns themselves are usually not run very professionally and certainly have been run in a very short sighted nature for most of their existences.
 
All i see all over utah is these ugly as hell box condos going up...
I dont know what they cost..hopefully not too much....
In 10 years...well I cant imagine what it will be like here.
 
EMSC said:
I feel like the items in that article have been discussed ad nauseum for at least the past 10-15 years or more. I very much didn't believe his math at the start of the article and he is certainly off. The $40K 1977 condo would be going for ~$209K today just via generic inflation (he claims only $110K today). Certainly still no match for today's real prices, but still that's a bad way to introduce yourself to knowledgeable readers be so far off.

There are so many reasons ski towns have inflated way faster than generic and it's not just 'rich people bad'. Limited land, limited private/buildable land, nimby-ism, etc... have had a huge effect on supply too. Some of those are real constraints, some self imposed. Either way I've never seen any popular place/item/event/etc... ever have prices do anything but skyrocket when supply is severely limited. Maybe the ski towns should have approved a dense core with 20 story towers? Only half kidding as that is the kind of thing it would take to accommodate all the demand in some resorts. And if supply had been done in a timely fashion it certainly would have kept home price inflation much lower. But so much consternation of 'now that I'm here and it's so cute no one can change anything in the entire region let alone my town...' Guarantees a lot of issues will surface over time. Which is not to say that the big industry players don't have any blame. Just pointing out that the ski towns themselves are usually not run very professionally and certainly have been run in a very short sighted nature for most of their existences.
Click to expand...
Logic and facts don’t sell papers.
 
Miserable today at pc..yeah it was snowing very hard...but not the kind of snow you want.
Glop...on top of ice.
Guess I brought the east with me..
 
Rule of thumb is 1C of temperature is the change with about 500 feet of elevation. So it probably rains at 7,500 feet now about as often as at 7,000 feet in the 70s at Tahoe for example. But of course there’s natural volatility too. There were extreme high rain/snow line events in the Sierra in 1986 and 1997.

There might be microclimates that are worse. I strongly suspect Alyeska is one of them based upon mid vs. upper snowfall in the past decade.
 
EMSC said:
he $40K 1977 condo would be going for ~$209K today just via generic inflation (he claims only $110K today). Certainly still no match for today's real prices, but still that's a bad way to introduce yourself to knowledgeable readers be so far off.
Click to expand...

The supreme laziness not just to put the prompt into an AI tool, "$40k in 1977 in today's dollars inflation-adjusted," is frightening. And an editor not doing it - more frightening.

Interesting note: Vanguard started its no load/no fee S&P index funds in 1976. If you put $40k in it in 1977 in a basic SP500 Index Fund, you would have $3.6M. Even a good ski town real estate investment is no match for stocks.

Let’s start with mountain town real estate. The Nobis family (Jeremy, the big mountain skier who changed our sport, his fellow World Cup racing sister Shannon, mother Nancy, and father Craig) moved to Park City from Wisconsin in 1977. After shivering in their RV for three nights, they bought a condo for $40,000. Mom and dad raised skiers on blue-collar incomes—Nancy as a trauma nurse and Craig as a handyman. Time jump to 2025, and the median price for a Park City condo is $1.6 million.


Calculation of SP500 Returns

Investing $40,000 in an S&P 500 index fund in 1977 would have grown substantially by today, thanks to the power of compound interest and the historical performance of the S&P 500.​
​
The S&P 500 has delivered an average annual return of approximately 10.13% since 1957.​
​
​
​
Using this average annual return, we can estimate the growth of a $40,000 investment over 48 years (from 1977 to 2025) using the compound interest formula:​
​
A=P×(1+r)nA = P \times (1 + r)^nA=P×(1+r)n​
​
Where:​
​
  • AAA is the amount of money accumulated after n years, including interest.
  • PPP is the principal amount ($40,000).
  • rrr is the annual interest rate (10.13% or 0.1013).
  • nnn is the number of years the money is invested (48 years).
Plugging in the numbers:​
​
A=40,000×(1+0.1013)48A = 40,000 \times (1 + 0.1013)^{48}A=40,000×(1+0.1013)48​
​
A=40,000×(1.1013)48A = 40,000 \times (1.1013)^{48}A=40,000×(1.1013)48​
​
A≈40,000×88.74A \approx 40,000 \times 88.74A≈40,000×88.74​
​
A≈3,549,600A \approx 3,549,600A≈3,549,600​
​
Therefore, a $40,000 investment in an S&P 500 index fund in 1977 would be worth approximately $3,549,600 today, assuming an average annual return of 10.13% and reinvestment of dividends.​
 
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