It’s the end of the world as we know it at Arapahoe Basin ski area. As of last February, the resort known as “The Legend” has a new owner: the Alterra Mountain Company. That has to be better than prior owner Ralston-Purina, right?
We’ll see about that.
The press release accompanying the sale noted that Alterra had secured a $3 billion investment from “a diverse group of state and county pension funds, corporate pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations and insurance companies.”
And if that doesn’t say “fun on the snow” I don’t know what does.
All of that was on my mind last Friday when I pointed my own personal snowmobile west on I-70, heading for my final ski day of the season. I was living the dream! June skiing–even July skiing–is famous at A Basin! You reach it by white-knuckling over Loveland Pass. And that, naturally, leads to white-knuckle skiing. At least it felt safer than white-water rafting in Colorado, with our swollen rivers making even otters think twice before jumping in.
On June 14th, A Basin was literally the last resort for skiing in Colorado. And that’s where the legend meets reality. It's slopes, bowls, and chutes had been reduced to a dingy brown stripe of snow that oozed from summit to valley. We ski junkies were packed onto a trail that was only twenty feet wide in places–barely enough room to change your mind, let alone your direction. And it was so much harder to focus because of the wacky outfits everybody was wearing–the guy wearing a jester's cap and carrying a stuffed snake, the family outfitted in Pride tutus, and the woman in the blue bra and not much else. As the temperatures rose, the snow quality plunged. Which may be why many downhillers were downing tall-boys at the mid mountain grill at 10:45 a.m. We all shared the giddy sense that sure, the skiing was terrible, but it was way less terrible than being at work.
The lifts stopped turning at 2 p.m. to preserve some snow for the crazy people who would hold their noses and ski after me last weekend. My season was ending, and I mourned the loss. I tear up at all of life's turning points, even ones that involve a guy in a cow costume waving his udder at me as he skies past.
As I made my last turns of the year, I remembered a poem I was forced to memorize before I could escape French class in college. “Où sont les neiges d'antan?” wrote François Villon in 1461, just before snowmaking was invented. “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” Good question. Climate scientists warn us that these spotty slopes and desperate skiers may be a glimpse of a hot future I’d rather not contemplate.
Paradise is burning, and the smoke stinks.
On the ridge above Arapahoe Basin, I admired a herd of mountain goats nibbling the wildflowers and eying the foolish human beings far below. Maybe the goats know something we only suspect. They’re at home in the natural world, whereas we’re simply the world’s worst guests there.
The history of extinction shows that, if you trash your living quarters, you’re not invited back. Same goes if you melt it down. But I’ve already bought my ski pass for the ‘24-’25 season. I figure that when Alterra takes over A Basin, they’ve got three billion reasons to make sure it doesn’t all go up in smoke.
