Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery in Vail Valley [Hardcover]

Daniel Glick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 2001

Twin Peaks meets Philistines in the Hedgerows: An arson investigation in the ultra-rich ski town reveals a strange, complicated community where everyone is a logical suspect. . In October, 1998 seven fires simultaneously erupted atop Vail ski area. By the time they had been extinguished, several lifts were massively damaged, the elegant and beloved Two Elk Lodge was totally destroyed, lift shacks were just embers, and the ski patrol headquarters was beyond repair. Before the flames had even died down, rumors about likely culprits were spreading through the exclusive Colorado community. Everyone, it seems, was a likely suspect in the $12 million arson. Vail Associates (VA), the international recreation company that runs the ski basin, had gone public two years earlier, bringing a profit-at-all-costs mentality to a town that still prided itself on being run by grown-up ski bums. VA had a lucrative insurance policy that paid out well in case of fire. Environmentalists were angry about plans to expand the ski valley. Locals had employment grievances with VA, which preferred to import cheaper Central American workers to replace increasingly bummed out ski bums. Vail's ski patrol was furious at being told they would, as a cost-cutting measure, have to clean the patrol shack's toilets. Mom and Pop business owners in town had been scarred by the behemoth company's competitive claws. Other Colorado ski area owners were still apoplectic about a Justice Department anti-trust ruling that allowed Vail to gobble up two neighboring resorts. Backcountry skiiers feared Vail's relentless expansion would shut them out of their favorite terrain. Hunters were angry that the region's elk herd would be decimated to make way for more development. Neighboring towns had been fighting VA over water rights. Packed with odd characters and paranoia, with beautiful mountains and despicable actions, this is a book about crime, the environment, a small town, and a crime that remains unsolved. Powder Burn reads as quick as an expert skiier zooming down a black diamond slope.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the face of it, this is the story of unsolved arson at a high-glamour resort, a mystery packed with suspects that range from crusty ski bums to radical tree huggers to the resort's own corporate honchos. But underlying this entertaining true-life plot is a greater theme that is playing out across America. Here, tensions mount between the progress-minded shareholders of Vail Resorts Inc., environmentalists, and locals who simply pine for the days when they weren't priced out of having a meal--or a life--in Vail, Colorado. Elsewhere, similar hostility brews over conflicting interests in pricey tourist regions like Taos, New Mexico; the Florida Keys; and the Hamptons of New York. So while Powder Burn is an intriguing tale on its own, it also serves as a snapshot of our country as it struggles with its final growing pains. The modern corporatization of Vail Mountain is in direct contrast to its past, when a hard-drinking fellow could ride his horse into a bar and turn himself into local legend. Daniel Glick, a special correspondent for Newsweek, masterfully uses his reporter's eye for detail to deliver the spirit and breathtaking scenery of the Rocky Mountain West. He introduces personalities in rapid-fire succession, but, to his credit, the reader never feels overwhelmed or confused. The descriptions are so vivid--from the environmentalist tracking lynx paw prints through the snow to the vacationing company president staking out a Disney World pay phone as he receives updates on the 1998 fire's damage--that they remain fixed in the reader's mind as the story unfolds. It's a story that makes interesting reading for skiers, environmentalists, or anyone intrigued by the unfolding drama in our last wild places. --Jodi Mailander Farrell

From Publishers Weekly

Early on the morning of October 19, 1998, several raging fires caused $12 million in damage to ski lifts and buildings in Vail, Colo. Because construction of a vast new ski area that had been vehemently opposed by environmental groups was slated to begin that very day, arson was immediately suspected, and investigations revealed that the fires had been deliberately set. However, although a radical environmental organization claimed responsibility, the identity of the perpetrators was never discovered, and many local residentsAdarkly noting that the episode brought Vail's owners some much-needed sympathetic press, as well as insurance money that allowed them to rebuild outdated facilitiesAcontinue to believe the resort itself masterminded the event. Though unable to answer the all-important question of "whodunit," Glick, a Newsweek special correspondent for the Rocky Mountain region, provides a fascinating account of the tensions and cultural juxtapositionsAsometimes merely odd, sometimes deeply unsettlingAthat lurk beneath the idyllic, ersatz-Tyrolean surface of America's largest ski resort. Colorado, Glick notes, is populated by a volatile mix of diehard environmentalists and ruthless real estate barons, counterculture ski bums and titans of industryAall of whom coalesce in, and are particularly passionate about, places like Vail. Indeed, federal investigators found themselves confronted with a bewildering proliferation of suspects for the fires: it seemed that everyone within a 50-mile radius of the resort had a serious grudge against its owners, whose corporate HQ was known locally as "the Death Star." Combining solid investigative reporting with engrossing accounts of high-stakes wheeling and dealing and tantalizing glimpses of the glitzy life of the superrich, this is an irresistible story which, in Glick's hands, also reaches provocative conclusions about the more wide-ranging conflicts that beset the so-called New West. (Jan.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; First Edition edition (January 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586480030
• ISBN-13: 978-1586480035
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,817,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vail Singed Again in Sizzling Arson Probe, January 20, 2001

By 

Wendy Worrall Redal (Boulder, CO USA

Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery in Vail Valley (Hardcover)

If you've ever stood on the rim of the Back Bowls at Vail,
looking far across at Blue Sky Basin, poised to descend a slope of
fresh powder, it's hard to imagine that this place could be tarnished.
Vail, Colorado, the U.S.' largest ski resort, has lon had a fabled
reputation among skiers. Yet Vail is more than a legendary collection
of trails. It has become a corporate behemoth that has transfigured a
once-serene slice of Rocky Mountain reverie, to such a degree that
somebody -- in the cold, autumn darkness of October 1998 -- tried to
send a message back by setting some spectacular fires on the
mountaintop.

At first glance, "Powder Burn" is a
capitivating "whodunit," an investigation into the arson
that did $12 million in damage to ski lifts and buildings at the posh
resort. Yet the probe of the fires is but an entree to a wider tale
of intrigue, a saga of the cultural clash that ensues when outrageous
wealth and Wall Street power invades a once-pristine alpine valley and
ski town. It is a story happening not only in Vail but throughout the
West, as lattes and laptops displace cowboys and pick-up trucks in
rural hamlets blessed -- or cursed -- with gorgeous natural amenities.
Discovered by skiers, mountain bikers and fly-fishermen, they've been
turned into high-end recreation meccas, catering to "gentleman
ranchers" whose 10,000 square-foot getaway homes are more likely
to front a golf course than a working pasture. While the arson was
widely assumed to be the work of "eco-terrorists" opposed to
the ski resort's expansion into prime, old-growth lynx habitat,
"Powder Burn" reveals that any number of irate parties could
have had cause to strike the match.

Daniel Glick, a Newsweek
correspondent who covers the Rocky Mountain West, takes readers on a
provocative trip behind Vail's faux-Alpine facade, into a world where
corporate logic has defined an entire way of life. "Powder
Burn" is really a collection of interwoven stories, each
fascinating in its own right yet most potent when told together. It
is a mystery thriller, an inquiry into a brilliantly dispatched crime.
It is a history that challenges the more sugar-coated, coffee-table
versions recently published by a couple of Vail's founders. Glick
charts the transformation of Vail from a "high-altitude lettuce
patch" to its current status as a publicly traded corporation,
the plum acquisition of of a ruthless New York investment firm headed
by a former junk bond trader once the protege of Michael Milken. It
is a portrait of a place and its people, a sort of geo-social analysis
told through intimate glimpses of the individuals who call the valley
home, with varying degrees of commitment.

The author's journalist
background is evident in the book's persistent, meticulous reporting.
But "Powder Burn" reads like novel: with electric detail, it
takes the reader inside the minds of a diverse cast of characters,
from ski instructors to slope groomers to sheriff's investigators and
society-types. From struggling coffee-shop owners to the Manhattan
tycoons who run the show, Glick has talked with them all, including
Vail Resorts CEO Adam Aron, an East-coast executive now residing in
Beaver Creek who gained local notoriety for checking on lift
operations in tasseled loafers. That anecdote seems to symbolize
Vail's contemporary identity struggle, which Glick unveils in his
quest to discover whose simmering discontent had reached the explosion
point -- literally.

"Powder Burn" probes into Vail's
economics, politics and social dynamics, examining the same sorts of
issues that trouble other mountain resort towns, places like Jackson
Hole and Moab that are also trying to manage suburban-style sprawl and
the social dislocation that occurs with a flood of outside capital.
Anyone who's driven the stretch of I-70 from East Vail to Eagle has
observed the trophy homes juxtaposed with trailer parks, the fur-clad
cafe crowd and the Mexican immigrant workers who serve their every
need at minimum wage. Glick presents Vail as a microcosm of such
"New West" dichotomies, perhaps the apotheosis.

One of
Powder Burn's many revelations is the extent of Vail Resorts' vertical
integration. Not only does the corporation control 40% of all skiing
in Colorado (in addition to Vail and Beaver Creek, the company also
bought Keystone and Breckenridge in 1996), but an array of hotels,
rental shops, retail outlets, restaurants and real-estate development
as well. In fact, the largest realtor in the Vail Valley, involved in
65% of Eagle County real-estate transactions to the tune of nearly $1
billion last year, is a Vail Resorts joint venture. The reader
doesn't have to delve too far into "Powder Burn" before
Vail's owners, Apollo Partners LLP, begin to look like robber barons,
hell-bent on doing whatever it takes to increase shareholder returns
-- traditions and community be damned.

Glick makes it painfully
evident that the lynx isn't the only 'endangered species' around Vail.
Others may just have had easier access to revenge. And while the
arson remains unsolved, Glick does some speculating in his epilogue
about culpability. It's not the sort of suspect one might expect,
though. But let's not give the ending away.

You don't have to be a
skier or snowboarder to find "Powder Burn" an engrossing
read. Anyone concerned about the changing rural West should read this
book. From the prologue on, it's a punchy, witty, quick-moving tale
of greed and suspense, equally entertaining and disturbing, which will
rivet your attention through to the final page. If you are a Vail
afficionado, however, one thing is certain: once you've read
"Powder Burn," you'll never be able to stand on the edge of
the Back Bowls, or anywhere else on the mountain, and think of it the
same way again.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rocky Mountain Whodunnit, August 8, 2002

By 

Kevin Lane (Norfolk, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery in Vail Valley (Hardcover)

Vail/Beaver Creek is probably my favorite vacation spot on earth in the summertime...about the only time of year I can afford it (and even then barely). This is a fascinating book, part history of Vail, part meditation on the issues surrounding growth in the affluent west (ie, how a resort for the rich and famous affects the locals and the environment), but largely a whodunnit surrounding the 1998 arson on Vail Mountain.

I wouldn't go so far at to call this a "Rocky Mountain version of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' " - Glick's writing isn't that smooth and his character development isn't that deep. But I am fascinated by this part of the country and it's a good story that he has to work with. In the end he presents all the available evidence and lets you draw your own conclusions - probably the best way to end considering that the arson itself remains unsolved.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Title, Great Epilogue, August 12, 2001

By 

Linda A. Goin "goinhome" (Louisville) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery in Vail Valley (Hardcover)

My room mate asked me why it was taking so long to read this book, and my reply was that it was hard to stumble through Glick's clumsy writing. My interest, however, lay in my previous residency in CO and my interest in the subject, so I struggled through the chapters (many with very clever titles). I lived near Telluride for several years, and watched many of the same actions take place as did in Vail, re: the disparity of money and living conditions and in the attitudes of the haves and have-nots. Environmental issues are just one of the many issues in combat with residents and eco-groups against many of these new conglomerate ski companies, some with owners based far from operations.

Glick does a great job with the interviews and investigation; but his long, run-on sentences left much to be desired. If I didn't have an interest in his viewpoint on the subject, I would have put the book down in the third chapter. If you want the gist of it all, just read the epilogue, which - IMO - contains the best information and most well-written part of the book. This, alone, is worth the money, as well as the information. I'll never drive past Vail again without remembering the issues and the personal stories in this book.

Long live the lynx.