Customer Reviews

Downhill Slide: Why the Corporate Ski Industry is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns, and the Environment

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book reminded me of Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" (thorough, probing, disturbing & readable). "Downhill Slide" takes a look at the dangerous reach (Disneyfication) of Corporate America. This book is a must read for skiers (avid and former), the ski industry (listen up!), environmentalists and those who care about those "last best places."

This is the kind of book there should have been more of forty years ago; then we might not be in this fix.

Clifford sketches the transformation of the ski industry from a quaint and healthy alternative to gambling and drinking in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to a monster industry in the 21st, still healthy but not so quaint, that gives drinking and gambling fierce competition for discretionary dollars in our nation's mountain towns.

As mining and logging was gradually phased out, the focus shifted to recreation, changing charming towns into mere appendages of mega-resorts whose reason for being is the hawking of overpriced real estate, overpriced equipment, overpriced food, overpriced lift tickets-- and in the summer overpriced greens fees and tickets to film and music festivals. In most cases the resorts' gouging rest upon a firm foundation of reasonably priced public land leases, usually involving the US Forest Service, an agency of the Dept of Agriculture.

This last detail presents a problem for Clifford and his publisher, Sierra Club Books, For as logging and mining revenues to the USDA decline, it is hesitant to raise too sharply the rents or regulations on its new, relatively clean tenants, the resort operators. When Clifford makes the case for saving elk or lynx habitat the Forest Service is no doubt sympathetic, but probably a lot more interested in saving its own budget, and all the jobs that it supports. And a ski run, while not ideal, is a much better place for wildlife to thrive than what's left after a mining company extracts ore.

In Colorado there is a pair of sites, both mentioned in DOWNHILL SLIDE: Copper Mtn. Ski Area, and just 5 miles up the road, the mothballed Climax Molybdenum Mine. Copper Mtn has cut down some trees for ski runs and probably uses too much water for snowmaking and doesn't build housing in its "village" for non-rich people--but these are all things that can be fixed. At Climax what is left is a gray, treeless wasteland of slag heaps and tailing ponds. Half a mountain has been eaten away and the leftover sludge sluiced onto a vast flat area resembling a parking lot, into which you could fit dozens of parking lots as big as the one at Copper. Clifford spends many pages criticizing Copper and its owner, Intrawest Corp, but cites Climax only in a lone paragraph as a company which paid a good wage to its employees.

It seems to me that authors and publishers of perceptive and thoughtful books such as this one ought to propose real solutions to problems they elucidate. For example, why not build low cost employee housing for Copper Mtn on top of the wasteland at Climax? Anything, but anything they built, even Bauhaus, would be an improvement over what is there now. Looking at a map, one sees that a high speed quad could be run about 3 miles from this proposed employee housing to the top of Copper Mtn, thus cutting down on the commuter traffic from Leadville. The illegal workers discussed in Chapter 9 could realize the all-too-often elusive American Dream of skiing to work.

As a life-long Vailite, and an active board member of Colorado Wild and the Ski Area Citizens' Coalition,
I have found Mr. Clifford's book invaluable. We have known for quite some time that the sport of skiing
is in trouble and that the recent corporatization of skiing and associated development is causing enormous
stress on ski towns and the environment. Clifford has concisely and coherently expressed the problems, chosen
superb and telling examples and given citizens of ski towns throughout the country a lot to think about.

This book is much more accurate and readable than other recent ski industry tell-alls such as Powder Burn. The strength of the book lies in its central argument that the huge capital infusions into ski areas by big corporations (what he calls the resort "arms race") have done nothing to increase overall skier visits or investor share prices, while at the same time driving out those small areas unable to match these tactics. This short term thinking leads to a homogenization of the skiing experience. As a lifelong skier who grew up on a small hill and who now lives in one of the towns detailed by this book, I would say that Mr. Clifford's perception of this unfortunate trend is spot on. He also accurately recounts how the ski industry and the USFS categorically deny that ski area development has much greater off-site impacts than they would have the public believe. Finally he does an excellent job describing the political power of a big-time ski company in a small town. Based on personal experience, I would argue that he actually underestimates the reach of industry influence in state and local politics.

However, I would partially agree with some of the other writers who panned this book. Are we skiers really such dupes that we go to a resort and can't seem to keep our wallet in our pocket? To lay the blame for poor spending habits at the feet of the ski industry is a stretch.

Additionally, in specific instances (particularly surrounding the Vail Category III expansion and land trades in Eagle County, with which I am very familiar), Mr. Clifford omitted or failed to emphasize factual information that would have made his argument less cut-and-dried. To be fair, his assessment is generally correct, but in simplifying very complex issues he loses some critical points.

If you enjoy mountain sports, this book is well worth your time. Just keep in mind that it's not a scientific study.

A thought provoking book, and in my case a bit like preaching to the choir. I found Clifford's book well plotted, researched and documented in this touchy area of Big Business versus Environmentalism. I have seen most of the growth issues Clifford speaks of come to fruition living and working here in Aspen, Colorado. Included from my viewpoint as a law enforcement officer the impact that these re-constructed "Company Towns" can have on the inhabitants of Oz. The seasonal nature of the ski business lends itself to just what the ski industry demands and gets in its workers. Short term, no investment, minimal wage earners that could care less about the "skiing experience" you and I will be paying for, much less them contributing anything to the town itself. It's actually getting hard to find a "lift op" that knows the mountain well enough to tell you what's open and what's closed here. Many workers here are now imported from South America to fill the low paying jobs the ski hills provide. What Clifford pens of the shadow cast on the worker bees and their lives is what I deal with every day as a deputy sheriff for our county. The domestic violence, substance abuse and other crimes are very real if not underplayed by the powers that be including our local media. These can stem from long hours, low pay and too many people crammed into too small of a space due to high rents and unavailability of affordable housing. With the additional problem of culture clash creating friction between the workers themselves, the results are inevitable. The impact on the localized environment Clifford writes of is clear. When more and more water is lobbied to be taken from our local aquifer (in our record drought) for snowmaking, (read, "Cadilac Desert", by Marc Reisner) to the changing of the migration patterns of our local wildlife. We are seeing record numbers of conflicts between residents and visitors with the black bear, deer, elk and even with the mountain lion with wildlife paying the price. Caused in combination with reduced range, changing local climate and more encroaching construction as real estate is touted as the prime bottom line fattener. All the while skier numbers are dropping throughout Colorado. Aspen longer has a tourist/skier driven economy, rather it's coffers are filled from construction and second home sales. Fewer people on the slopes is fine by me, in a selfish way. Aspen SkiCo even tried an ad campaign that touted "Uncrowded by Design" which wasn't inacurate. But as our town creeps closer and closer to one large gated community, it smacks of the mining industry that once dominated our state, then dried up, mostly disapearing leaving us holding the collective bag for the damage done to our waterways, hillsides and towns. This is including deep damage to the dreaded "E" word; Environment. All in all a good read with a bit of a pessimistic view of the solution. Clifford's book glimpses the increasing chasm between the proletariat and those that can afford skiing in today's destination resorts. His latest work was a fine piece while leaving me with the feeling that if the big planners and developers want to play a New York street hustler's ponzi scam on some of the resort towns using the very finite number of skiers, OK. Every business has the right to go broke on its own. Only one organism continues to grow until the death of its host; cancer. And, as Clifford documents, the damage left behind can be fatal to those that claim the place as home. His earlier offering, "Falling Season" was my favorite, but a less weighty tale than taking on corporate bottom line.

I was impressed with the breath and depth of the analysis. The research was very thorough and added much to the credibility of the conclusions. Great work.

It should be required reading for all full time residents of ski mountain communities. Most of all it should cause an awakening in elected officials of the communities and surrounding counties of the ski towns (except those who accept election campaign contributions from land developers).

The book also reveals that the use of our public lands by developers, at bargain prices, needs further review...

Clifford is a journalist and he personalizes issues and focuses on details that don't illustrate as much as they trivalize. He wants this to be a book about the ski industry but it is really about Vail with anecdotes about other players thrown in if Clifford thinks they are juicy. He defines the golden years of skiing to be that time when he was in his mid-twenties. He wants to get rid of the big corporations to return to that period. He wants to blame the financial markets for all of the enviornmental and social issues of the rocky mountains. I kind of doubt if ski towns were ever as idyllic as has he would like to remember them. Co-ops and non-public companies can be just as short-sighted and just as rapacious as public ones. And even if the resorts drive the economy there are a few other trends and relationships that deserve some blame. The Latino racism / exploitation thing that Clifford describes is less of an issue in California than it is in Colorado, and I don't think it applies at all in the Northeast or British Colombia. (Somebody obviously washes the dishes and makes up the beds in those resorts, but the issue of undocumented aliens may be a local one.) The water for snowmaking issue is not relevant in BC (or even at Mamoth with their coastal weather patterns) - and I suspect that Hal has glossed over the nuances between the Northeastern resorts (mainly on private land with lots of snowmaking necessary for operation) and the front-range areas (mainly public land and snowmaking necessary mainly to extend the season.) Water rights have been a contentious issue in the West as long as there have been competing users and at least the snowpack gives up it's runoff in the spring. The top end resorts are clearly not about skiing - duh - but that only applies to the developments in the highest rung and doesn't provide much insight into the industry as a whole. If you're going to bring up Pellican Butte (which is irrelevant to any of the organizations he addresses) why not talk about Early Winters where the community - or possibly the outside environmentalists - prevailed? If you're going to talk about Silverton Mountain why not talk about all of the lost ski areas in the same range? There are some interesting debates inherent in this issue - conservation vs. recreation, tourism as an extractive industry, regulation of development, commodification of leisure, - etc. But the resort is not the sport and it isn't even the community and when Clifford wants to blame everything on the impersonal corporate bad guy he ends up sounding like another anti-globalization [supporter].

Hal Clifford has meticulously interviewed sources on both sides of the resort-sprawl issue, allowing his ski-industry executives to hang themselves with their own statements. True, he is definitely on the side of the environment, and true, he is not immune to an occasional wry comment on their clueless behavior.
What the irate reviewers here ignore completely is his contention that the ski industry is no longer about skiing, but about fattenting the bottom line for themselves. In the process, they are sponging up vast tracts of irreplaceable, supposedly protected acreage, sometimes in cahoots with our government "guardians" of it.
I suspect those particular reviewers are stooges of the ski industry. Read their diatribes with that possibility in mind.
-- From a Ski Non-Bum

This book never gets old. As we watch the resort industry circle the drain EXACTLY as predicted in Downhill Slide, it makes you wonder how we could all be so stupid. A few get very, very rich at the cost of thousands of people left with nothing and an environmental disaster where taxpayers pick up the tab. This book is about the ski industry but could easily have predicted the inevitable downfall of Enron or Goldmann Sachs.

I enjoyed reading this book.

One individual has given it the same rating of one star three different times, bringing down the overall score by more than one reviewer should. Not fair to Mr. Clifford and his efforts, Amazon should fix this. I do understand why people in the industry might wish to discredit Mr. Clifford's book, though.

I do not feel this book is "deep environmentalism" as suggested by some other reviewers. I think Clifford's discussion of impacts, on minimum streamflows and wildlife habitat for example, are relevant within the context of current environmental concerns, policy, and law. I suspect readers who feel this is "deep environmentalism" might find any obstruction to enterprise on behalf of fish and wildlife to be unacceptable.

I also find the social aspects discussed to be relevant to the residents of these communities and the labor force which supports the industry. I think anyone interested in resort skiing, real estate, and development in general can read Mr. Clifford's book and find themselves informed and entertained. That is, unless the thought of elk herds and trout getting in the way of development of recreational properties annoys you.

I found it to be well researched, well edited, and yes, opinionated. All in all, informative and easy read.