 Poster: A snowHead
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The influence of major resort developers on the spirit of skiing is exemplified in this interesting news report from today's Denver Post.
Intrawest, who also run Whistler and are building Arc 1950 in France, should maybe tread carefully. Skiers may end up resenting being treated as pawns in a money-making game.
There are not that many ski jumps in the world, yet it's one of the finer traditions of our sport. Let's hope the Winter Park 'ski jump preservation society' wins the argument. It would be sad to see ski jumping diminish because kids don't have access to facilities.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
Intrawest, who also run Whistler and are building Arc 1950 in France, should maybe tread carefully. Skiers may end up resenting being treated as pawns in a money-making game.
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Intrawest have already pissed off a lot of people in Les Arcs, including one of the original developers of the resort and the green movement. To build 1950 they cut down 350 rare pine trees some of which have taken hundreds of years to reach maturity.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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That's utterly outrageous. There's no way the ski business should be felling trees on that scale. Do you have a source for that info., sherman-maeir? I'd like to look into that. Intrawest did some very slick marketing to sell the appartments, which focused on their architectural harmony with local buildings etc. Of course, their high-rise blocks look nothing like anything in the Savoie. It's a kind of pastiche architecture.
It would be interesting to know what planning process took place, and which politicians were involved. The pollution which will be generated by thousands of vehicles servicing Arc 1950 was also avoidable. The resort could have been accessed by electric funicular transport (viz Arc 1600), which was another aspect of the original vision of Les Arcs' founder Robert Blanc (though he originally built a cablecar to get there).
It's appalling that the ski business, in 2004, is still an environmental nuisance.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| Do you have a source for that info., sherman-maeir? |
It was in a French newspaper in the last month. It was all Air France had on a flight I took recently. It wasn't Roger Godino but another geezer whose name I didn't recognise (obviously not Blanc who was killed by an avalanche!) who was being interviewed as part of a piece on Intrawest. I took a cutting and will try to look it out and send it to you if I can find it.
I didn't realise that pines took so long to grow at altidue. I was skiing recently an there was a pine about my height and the instructor said it would take 60 years to reach that size at 1800 meters. Is that really true?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I was told by an instructor that the type of tree called an 'arolle' in french which grow by the side of the (some of) the pistes in Courchevel do indeed take many many years to grow - they grow so slowly having adapted to the conditions at altitude - that makes them very tough and so the wood is highly prized for furniture. I've also been told that your common-or-garden sapin is much tougher than the pines you get in this country, again presumably due to having adapted, and consequently when used for 'pine' furniture is definitely NOT the same as MFI pine ...
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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They should be stopped!
Winter Park is a favourite resort of mine, and while I originally liked the idea of Intrawest building additional lifts, I don't like this idea. 
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One gets the impression that the oldest resorts, where old families rule, protect their environments and respect the traditions of skiing. I guess it all comes down to land ownership. Occasionally you find a funky old ski lift in a resort, and you discover it's privately owned. It all adds to the flavour and diversity of the experience. The alternative, maybe, is to live in Intrawestland - free of trees, free of ski jumps.
Would anyone from Intrawest care to comment? A balanced debate would be interesting.
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DG - this is a rather charming article about "famously rustic" ski areas in North America: http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03052004/business/144942.asp
Sample extract: " The handful of holdout ski areas are uniformly privately owned, usually by patient investors and avid ski fans who shun debt. Perhaps the most ardently retro resort in the U.S., Mad River Glen in Vermont, is cooperatively owned by a group that plans one day to replace its primary, historic 1948 single-seat lift with . . . yet another single-seat lift so old-fashioned that it would have to be specially designed and cost 30 percent more than just getting a regular, modern lift. Asked if the resort has made any improvements lately, Eric Friedman, the ski area's spokesman, responded, "We put a new urinal in the men's room." Like the other retro areas, Mad River bans snowboards."
There's a pointed contrast with Intrawest's annual "1,100 marketing campaigns, price specials and other promotions" in there too!
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