Trips south often begin in Moab

On our way to sunny Arizona, we decided to overnight in Moab, one of my favorite small-cities in Utah.

Except during winter months, this place is always busy and the traffic going through town is simply crazy. Crossing Main Street where there's no traffic light is simply suicidal! I have been half a dozen times in Moab and stayed there four times at various motels and motels.

This time our hotel was just great, brand new with a super large room, however our dinner at the Moab Brew Pub was disgusting. It used to be much better in years past. Okay, there's always next visit

Park City is closed for the season!

This past Easter Sunday, as I was skiing with some “friends of a friend” from Europe, we all closed the door on my 32nd ski season in Park City which also happened to be my 64th in my entire life.

Suffice to say that I've now skied more in Park City than anywhere else and I consider this is to be a major threshold in my snow-life. I can now claim that I've become “an American skier” so, let's celebrate that promotion!

Not what my doctor ordered

When Emma Morano passed away on Saturday at the ripe age of 117, it was revealed that the secret of her longevity was a steady diet of 3 eggs a day and not much reliance on fruits and greens.

In other words, the total opposite of what my doctor keeps on telling me. Her bad cholesterol must have stayed in overdrive for the past half-century and she would have flunked every single physical she would have taken.

My sense is that she (fortunately) never took take any. My doctor would have told her “Emma, at this point, your chances of dying of a heart attack are 100%!, I'll have to put you on statins...” If she had followed his admonition, her chances would have climbed to 150% and she'd be long dead...

Another good reason to say that ignorance is bliss!

The shrinking American ski season

When I first moved to Park City, it wasn't uncommon to see our ski mountains stay open through early May, but this has become a distant memories. In fact, our real ski season now spans between December 20 and March 31.

That's right, just over three month! Unlike Europe, Easter is not a ski factor on this side of the pond, except maybe for a few Latin American visitors. Of course there's all the pre-season excitement, but it involves mostly local clientele.

Destination skiers only come during these sought-after 100 days. Early April, the interest wane and everyone is ready to show off on their expensive road or mountain-bikes, hit the golf course, jump in their boats or return to gardening.

I will have skied through the end of the Park City season (today is closing day) and can attest that after March, while conditions were still very good, the skiers were gone.

A glut of expensive homes...

Park City has been booming for as long as we've lived here, but not as much as it has in recent years, and particularly after Vail Resorts purchased two of our three local ski areas.

Lately, I have been shocked by how much real estate prices have soared. If we focus solely on the City of Park City (8,000 inhabitants) and look at its real estate listing for single family homes (not including multi-family dwelling), we find 129 listings, ranging from less than $1 million to over $20 million for a total of $575 million at an average listing price of $4.44 million!

Out of these numbers only 6 homes are listed under $1 million, 26 range from $1 to $2 million, 30 from $2 to $3 million and 97 are scattered from $3 to $20 million...

The bottom line is that we are faced with glut of expensive homes and their price distribution is totally out of kilter as it doesn't reflect the typical pyramid of affordability.

Is a correction coming? Most probably in my view, and much faster than we might anticipate...

Can the independent ski resort survive?

A few days ago, Aspen Skiing Company and KSL Capital Partners just acquired Intrawest in a deal valued at $1.5 billion.

We'r e talking about Snowshoe, Steamboat, Stratton, Winter Park and both Tremblant and Blue Mountain in Canada.

The following day, that same group gobbled up Bear Mountain, June Mountain, Mammoth Mountain, and Snow Summit, all in California. While not mentioned in the merger, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows (both affiliate of KSL) will also become part of this family.

So now, the big question is what will happen to the small operator like for instance Deer Valley, here in Park City?

Will the new mega-players like this new entity, Vail Resorts, Powdr Corp or Boyne Resorts try to jump on these independents and add them to their portfolio?

This appears to be quite likely as this on-going consolidation seems far from over...

The stagnation of ski binding design

For almost 30 years, nothing much has changed in the way ski bindings operate.

Nothing drastically new has come up and with binding companies moving from solely-owned companies ran by their founder to large corporations in which bindings are bundled and branded with skis and boots, ski bindings have become a commodity that no one worries about and for which the general assumption is that technology has reached its final destiny.

When Rossignel took over Look bindings in 1994, it has been notorious in getting away with stale and rudimentary designs that hearken to the old Geze toe-unit and the spartan Look 27 heel-piece.


The only interesting new product that came outside of the “legacy brands” (Look, Marker, Salomon and Tyrolia) has been the so-called KneeBinding that is supposed to mitigate knee injuries. That's right, we're talking about ACL injuries (anterior cruciate ligament) that are estimated to affect between 60 and 80,000 skiers, world-wide, each season.

Proponents of the KneeBinding claim that their bindings, with its lateral release at the heel, will protect the ACL. This claim might be overblown though, as no one, among the established suppliers has tackled this problem yet and by so doing, validated KneeBinding claim.

All this to say that we shouldn't expect much from that the legacy brands and can only hope that some independent product developers like KneeBinding finally bring some innovation into a market that is desperately asleep.