Deer Valley's independence ends

Back around mid April of this year, following the merger announcement of KSL Capital Partners, Henry Crown and Company, Intrawest, Mammoth and Squaw Valley (KSL), I wondered how long the other independent ski resorts could survive.

I was thinking in particular about our local resort, Deer Valley, that I suspected soon would be gobbled up by Vail Resorts, as its owners, the Stern family along with Roger Penske, had grown tired of running it, were scared of climate change, and ready to cash out on an investment that had reached a plateau and was demanding more capital to be further developed.

I was wrong, KSL got it. It's true that the newly formed entity  absolutely had to have a resort only 35 miles drive from a major, reliable airport in their portfolio, and one telling reason for this was that Deer Valley couldn't even package Solitude as part of the sale; it's more than likely that the the small ski area will have to be "unloaded" sooner than later, to Brighton, its neighbor that is owned by Boyne Mountain.

Today, most skiers patronizing that resort are wondering with justifiable terror if snowboarding will ever be allowed there (in fact, this is the only resort in the world, along with Alta and Mad River Glen to still discriminate against snowboarders). Well, these die-hard skiers should breathe easy for another season as Deer Valley's announcement states that there is no plan to allow snowboarding “at this time”.

My sense is that skiing-only might have survived with a Vail ownership, having a snowboarding option next door at Park City, but not with KSL that is a private equity group (not exactly a not for profit corporation) and that will have to offer a common pass along with the implicit expectation that Utah, hence Deer Valley, is open for snowboarding too.

This said, change is good most of the time, and I'm pretty certain Deer Valley will continue to do well and might even benefit a lot from that merger. I'm a skier that happens to like snowboarders, know that there are families composed of skiers and snowboarders.

Why not keep them together? Isn't it time to be a little more inclusive?