The World of Intrawest

A snowHead

[Note:] This open-ended thread focuses on Intrawest, the world's largest ski resort developer, which is building Arc 1950 and planning to enter the Swiss Alps near Verbier. It's based in N. America, where it operates Whistler-Blackcomb and other prominent resorts such as Copper Mountain, Mont Tremblant, Winter Park and Mammoth. Regular news updates will be posted below as they roll in.]

Intrawest has announced a $1 billion expansion of its Quebec ski resort Mont Tremblant. It's claimed that this will be the largest tourism development in North America over the next 10 years.

This report from the Toronto Star.

A snowHead

Yes, they had a "live chat", mostly agitprop for condo buyers and little useful. Only half built at present-phew!

I'm a little dazed by these Canadian marketing schemes, especially when local hills like Gray Rocks are shutting down.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

There's an insightful article about Intrawest's modus operandi in today's Daily Telegraph, by David Rowan.

It puts a lot more flesh on the proposals for Mont Tremblant. Here are some choice quotes:

"... stretch to £270,000, and you get to keep the suite and all its stylishly furnished contents, which the hotel will rent out for you whenever you are away. Either way, a complimentary breakfast is included."

"The "grand master plan", mapped out by Intrawest's architects in extraordinary detail, envisages a necklace of custom-built resorts eventually linked by a Swiss-style mountain railway."

"Signs of enforced joyfulness permeate the twee, pedestrianised centre - from the grinning clowns employed to joke among the crowd to the instructions displayed by the bungee-trampoline: "Rule 1: Keep smiling at all times.""

"As a centrally planned economy, Tremblant has been executed with a rigour that would impress Stalin."

[Incidentally, I assume this is such a well-sourced article because the author, David Rowan, is the founding publisher of Ski Area Management, unless it's a different David Rowan!]

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The Aspen satellite resort of Snowmass has been given the go-ahead to build a $400 million village, to be developed by Intrawest, provoking local controversy.

This report by The Denver Post.

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More details on the plans for Snowmass, from Aspen Times Weekly.

[Update 24 September 2004] Intrawest have filed revised plans for an expansion of Copper Mountain, Colorado, after initial plans to nearly double the size of the resort were rejected. This report from CBS4 Denver.

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The first (I believe) Intrawest development in Europe is the Arc 1950 village, which follows Arc 1600, Arc 1800 and Arc 2000.

The Arc 1950 properties have been marketed with extraordinary skill, using extremely impressive architect impressions of the development and pricing which seems to have hit the mark with UK skiers, who have apparently bought a high percentage of the property.

But questions have arisen over the environmental impact of the expansion of Les Arcs. As we've discussed in another thread, there have been accusations of hundreds of ancient pine trees felled. These accusations have been made by the founding family of Les Arcs, the family of Robert Blanc who died in an avalanche over 20 years ago. I put these accusations to the senior management of Intrawest a while back, who did not deny the felling but blamed it on the main operating company of Les Arcs.

Arc 1950 projects an idyllic landscape of mountains and rushing streams, but is essentially a drive-in development, generating thousands of vehicle movements every month up the mountain road from Bourg St Maurice (unlike Arc 1600, which can be accessed by funicular). Air pollution is therefore a significant factor.

It would be interesting to read any comments by snowHeads who live near Arc 1950, or who have taken a holiday at Arc 1950.

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I've skied around 1950 a few times, and did look into buying an apartment there but was deterred by the price. From a visitor's point of view it is extremely pleasant - ski-in/ski-out, car free, easy on the eye, well specified accommodation, located in a major ski domain, etc.

I understand what you're saying about the environmental impact, but as I see it the age of mass skiing is inherently unfriendly to the environment as it involves transporting large numbers of people to the snow-line, then above it. While mountain railways might be a green way of transporting people from valley floor to the snow line, they can't cope with the volume of people that mass tourism involves. If we want funiculars to be the main method of valley to high pasture transport we need to devise a way of rationing skiing, either by price or by some other method of reducing demand.

As for whether Arc 1950 is more or less ennvironmentally aware than any other high altitude development I have no idea. The sales pitch certainly stressed that it was more sympathetic in appearance to the local environment than any other high altitude French development, but nevertheless it's just concrete apartment blocks with all the usual service requirements that other resorts have such as Tignes, Les Menuires, Arc 2000, etc.

After all it is free

Zermatt is far larger than Arc 1950 and ships all its visitors by mountain railway (though admittedly many park a couple of miles down the valley). Chamonix is accessible by train. St Anton is accessible by train. Are we incapable or unwilling to demand that people go from valley to snowline by cable, or on rails?

All this pollution is madness, as far as I can see. It's all too easy for Intrawest, or anyone else to isolate themselves from the immediate effects of their 'car free' developments, when the reality is huge 'car borne' air pollution. Isn't there a more intelligent, environmentally sustainable way that the expansion of skiing can be controlled?

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David Goldsmith, my point is that given the current numbers of people who go skiing it is impossible to get each of them from the valley floor to the snowline by rail or cable. There simply is not, and could not be, sufficient capacity to do this. As I said, the only way to acheive the valley-snowline transfer by rail is to significantly reduce the number of people who want ski, which I believe neither of us want to see. It also ignores the fact that valley floor-snow line is only a very small part of the journey. Much more environmental damage is caused by flying lots of people to the Alps and then driving them to the valley floor (probably accounts for 75% of the drive time).

Zermatt might be larger than Arc 1950, but it is not larger than all the Les Arcs villages combined. Expecting all those people to use a mountain railway would lead to chaos on transfer day. As for Chamonix and St Anton - what do you think the balance is between guests who arrive by train and guests who arrive by car? I'd guess that many more arrive by car. For most resorts it is not economically viable to ship guests in and out by rail, and for many resorts I guess it would be impossible from an engineering point of view.

David, just out of interest, do you only ski in resorts which you can access by rail?

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I reckon the holiday operators are more likely to steer the holiday makers to go to the Intrawest shops though although I agree there is a risk of people going to a dodgy ski rental shop.

That's why it's nice to get recommendations for good rental shops from a forum such as this. Wink

Intrawest hasn't let me down yet.....touch wood. Shocked

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

David Goldsmith, do you think mass market skiing could be sustained without the resorts that rely on that fume-causing traffic to bring their guests in week after week?

Regards

Rob

A snowHead

rob@rar.org.uk, that's the crux of the matter - assuring the long-term by dealing with the short-term. We're running out of time.

A snowHead

David Goldsmith, OK, so we've established the question - now what's your answer?

Regards

Rob

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Well, let's take a case study. Both Val d'Isere and Tignes have been forced to take urban solutions to move cars out of their centres. The real issue, though, is the vast volume of traffic up from Bourg St Maurice. The cars should come no further than that, with shuttle buses for the final hour's journey - a Zermatt-type solution.

In London, cars have been forced out of the central area with prohibitive pricing. That's another method - a toll road. The French are well used to them. The same method could be used for the roads up to the Arcs resorts.

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Excuse me, that's the last thing I want, a view of acres and acres of car park! Wink

There are plans afoot for a bypass, well advanced I believe, to remove all the through traffic from BSM. I'm sure local businesses wouldn't complain at your suggestion DG. The 'voie rapide' from Moutiers to Aime is also being worked on to speed things up. A shame, because there's a very pleasant walking area and cycle route from BSM to Aime along the river, and the bypass will pass nearby.

With your solution though the road from BSM to Val/Tignes would be a nightmare. It's bad enough as it is, with occasional landslips, narrow, needs a lot of works before it's suitable for streams of buses.

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David Goldsmith, see the thread on ski trains over on the SCGB forum Crying or Very sad

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David Goldsmith, your second recommendation is to reduce the number of people who go skiing by pricing them out of the market. A perfectly sensible solution, but not one I thought you supported. Your park and ride ride recommendation, turning BSM into the Tarantaise Car Park (tm), seems only to deal with the last 5% of the journey - surely the other 95% is much more environmentally damaging? I would support drastic measures if they led to dramatic solutions, but drastic measures which only affect things at the margin seem to be nothing more than ways to salve our troubled conscience.

Regards

Rob

After all it is free

We need to put this into perspective. How much CO2 is emitted in the last 10 miles of a journey? Compared with the emissions from the aircraft taking the skier to the Alps - or, worse, the Rockies - it's negligible.

David, you think that it's madness to take cars into a high resort; in another thread, we've seen your similar views on high altitude slopeside developments. But, with young children, convenience of this type makes a huge difference to the enjoyment of a skiing holiday.

Is it also madness to burn extra CO2 travelling to Italy when we could ski in nearer France? Is it even more madness to ski in the USA? Is it madness to take connecting flights when a direct flight alternative is available? Is it madness to travel to the Alps more than once a year?

There's more to global warming than the final mile of a journey to the slopes.

We should all take the train to the Alps ( and we would if we were serious about the enviroment ) sadly despite the fact that we could do this if the trains were properly organised ( not that difficult ) we do not. We express the opinion that it is :-

More convenient to fly, ignoring the ever growing check in times and the wait for the baggage at the other end.

Trains are not a comfortable option, certaionly true of most if not all UK trains, but I've been on some very nice European ones

We get there faster if we fly, true but we waste a day of our holiday going each way, a well organised train journey could get you from London to Switzerland or France over night each way giving you 2 extra days skiing

Flying is much cheaper ... the ultimate answer because in these days of cheap flights it is, last year I managed to go from Southampton to Geneva return for just £51 this year the fare appears to be in excess of 3 times that making it much closer to what the rail fare used to be, sadly the rail link no longer runs Sad

I wonder why Crying or Very sad

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stuarth, not sure about coal fires in china but I can help with car and volcano CO2 emissions: my car (a medium sized hatchback) emitted about 4.93 metric tonnes of CO2 last year (I drove approx 29,000 km). A volcano like Mt Etna (which incidently has ski fields on both north and south flanks, although I wouldn't recommend either particularly as lifts are occasionally destroyed by eruptions) typically emits 1.1 million metric tonnes per year. An estimate of total CO2 emissions fom fossil fuel sources in the UK during 1999 is 156 million tonnes. I estimate that last year when driving from Bourg St Maurice to various Tarantaise resorts my CO2 emissions were in the region of 0.00017 of a metric tonne. I hope these figues shed a little light on the scale of the problem.

Regards

Rob

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More Intrawest news items:

Their latest financial results and global developments are reported today by Business Wire.

And, from The Aspen Times, an update on the developments planned at Aspen Snowmass.

Plus, news from Denver Business Journal on their plans for Winter Park.

I've just received, via PG (who's on the road to Val d'Isere), a press statement from Intrawest announcing that they have taken full control of Alpine Helicopters Ltd., the parent company of Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) which is the largest heli-ski operation in the world, controlling 50 percent of heli-skiing in Canada.

More information on Intrawest's site: www.intrawest.com

You know it makes sense.

It's reported today that Intrawest has sold its majority interest in the Californian ski resort of Mammoth.

This report from The Vancouver Sun.

In California, there are reported concerns that the resort may be taken up market: this report from The Los Angeles Times.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Dormant for 10 months, then cheerfully resurrected. Can any other thread beat that I wonder?

But sorry. I don't know Mammoth.

A snowHead

Let's hope the dormant volcano that is Mammoth Mountain doesn't re-awaken as suddenly! (At least Intrawest would no longer be responsible for the CO2 emitted by it.)

Mammoth is a fantastic mountain, with huge amounts of (sometimes a little heavy) snow, sometimes accompanied by quite high winds. I would say it has more acreage of above-timberline steeps than any other US ski area.

But it is a long way from anywhere - the 5 hour drive from LA quoted in the story is a little optimistic. Frankly, I'm amazed that it logged as many as 1.5m skier days - those S. Californians don't mind driving! (Even with the highest petrol prices in the US, although still way below European prices.)
The key to future development is the airport. (The success of Jackson Hole over the last decade has been based upon its airport.)

I don't know how much charm the town can claim - it really is a hodge-podge, and quite spread out. It needs a centre.

Intrawest are primarily a real estate company, and they will continue to do what they really wanted, which is to develop and sell their "village" at Mammoth. Last season's drought at Whistler obviously hurt them a bit, and they don't want to gamble on Mammoth becoming the "next big destination ski resort in the US", which is by no means guaranteed. Well done to them - they got a good chunk of money, $365m. Compare that to the bargain $100m which Vail Resorts picked up Heavenly for in 2000 - from the cash-strapped American Skiing Company.

A snowHead

I realize this is an old post, and not fully on topic, but . . .
stuarth, with regards to your post about human emissions not be a significant cause of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere:
Normally there is basically a fixed amount of carbon above ground and trapped under the earth's surface. Small amounts are released as CO2 into the atmosphere through volcanic erruptions, geisers, etc., and a roughly equal amount gets slowly put back under the earth's surface through the natural formation of fossil fuels. Without us, the system is at equilibrium. However, humans extract the carbon that should remain underground at a very fast rate, and burn it, releaseing CO2 into the atmosphere far more quickly (essentially infintiely more quickly) than it can be absorbed by carbon sinks and eventually turn back into fossil fuels below the earth's surface. So the natural sources of CO2 are accounted for by the earth, but our fossil fuel burning is not. That's why we have more CO2 in the atmosphere, and are running low on oil reserves (we likely only have a few decades more worth of oil at most).

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Having established Arc 1950, Intrawest now has its sights set on Flaine and Verbier for future development. This report from The Observer looks at their plans for 'Flaine Montsoleil', with a historical perspective on Flaine's origins in the late 1960s.

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David Goldsmith, haven't you previously flagged up Intrawest's interest in Flaine and Verbier on a couple of occasions here on snowHeads? Are there any other developers working across the Alps at rthe moment?

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rob@rar.org.uk, actually it was a thread I started a while back .... to which Mr. Goldsmith himself contributed...

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to be fair I don't think he actually posted about it though, he may not be reading anyone's else posts but he's one of the diminishing number reading his own, or I assume he is Very Happy

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Rob, darling, yes I'd written about Verbier. Forgot about Flaine.
PG, darling, thanks for the reminder - I'd forgotten that one.
ise, miaow, baby!

After all it is free

Warm greetings to The Supremes, by the way!

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Thank you for the greeting, and can I extend my best wishes to fellow artists in the Goldsmith Gospel Choir and enquire where and when the Reverend Goldsmith will be preaching his next sermon to the unwashed masses?

Apologies in advance if I drop off, but I've been skiing and am a wee bit tired.

Help!!

The World of Intrawest

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