Off-season in Park City

On Friday, we went on Main Street, Park City for a stroll. It was cold, snowy with very few folks in the street.

It was sad and depressing like any gray, off-season day in any mountain town on the planet when the ski-lifts have stopped, from Aspen to Zermatt, including Bariloche or even Thredbo, down-under.

No more skiing, no more sparks, no more joy. Not my kind of town, my kind of day or my kind of vibe either. Well, a perfect opportunity to feel blue, down and hopeless.

Thank God, this was only temporary as the weather forecast was promising some sun for the week-end along with some good skiing, still available for us to enjoy at nearby Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons!

The hypocrisy of “cheap disruption”

As Uber is preparing for its IPO, Airbnb continues to shelter us inexpensively, cheap air travel makes globe-trotters out of most of us, and Bengladesh keeps clothing us for next to nothing, we're clearly seeing that it's very easy to take advantage of what is super cheap in our daily lives and turn a blind eye on the exploitative or destructive new economy that has become a new normal within our lives.

Just like Facebook, most of us know that patronizing of these resources is very bad, but we keep going to the well... I might add: Just for how long will we continue and maintain a straight face?

The bogus warranty...

Less than three years ago, the two-years old dishwasher we had died on us and we had to replace it. We did plenty of research to buy the most reliable brand, but since we had been burned many times already by unreliable modern appliances, we purchased a five-year extended warranty.

On March 27, a part in that appliance broke, and sure enough, we called the reseller that immediately told us to contact a certain department that dealt with warranty issues.

After jumping through a series of hoops and bouncing back and forth, we finally were told that the company showed no extended warranty for our dishwasher.

In other words, the reseller had pocketed the premium and “forgot” to forward the necessary paperwork!

I was livid and escalated my complaint to the top levels of the company, and finally, received plenty of apologies from a variety of managers. Finally, almost two weeks later, a technician came to fix that problem, under, of course, full warranty.

Now, guess if I'll ever use this reseller again?

Beware of ski-tracks!

Last week, in my French hometown, near the Avoriaz ski resort, an out-of-bound Ukrainian skier jumped off a cliff some 150 feet to his death.

While this kind of accident isn’t unusual in the Alps, it must be noted that this poor man’s fatal fall might be due to a judgmental error many skiers can make when they ski powder in places they’re unfamiliar with.

The area where the accident happened is one that a number of paragliding skiers use for easy take off, and it’s quite plausible that the unfortunate 50 year-old skier might have unwittingly followed some fresh tracks left by paragliders while not quite seeing that there were huge cliffs beyond the visible edge of the slope.

Morale of the story: Never follow willy-nilly fresh tracks in an unknown area where there might be cliffs or other dangerous features, by simply trusting that they’ll lead to a skiable path down below.

Always remain extremely wary and when in doubt, proceed very slowly!

Magic, the Swiss version of Epic

Three winter seasons ago, a group of 30 Swiss ski areas, mostly in the French speaking region of the small Alpine country, decided to emulate Vail Resorts' Epic Pass and united in offering for about $400 their Magic season ski pass.

According to what I've been able to gather 85,000 passes were sold in 2017-18, then 102,000 this past season and next year's is anyone's guess, as skiers must commit by early May. At any rate, that's more than $40 millions in the till, more than six month before ski season starts.

For next season, the price of the Magic pass has been hiked by more than 7% to about $430, compare this to 5-6% for both Epic and Ikon.

According to Swiss ski industry sources this initiative is credited with a 10% uptick in skier-days for the whole country and a stunning 30% increase in visitations at participating ski areas.

What's notable is that weekend traffic on major southern Swiss highways has increased too, bringing Sunday returns to a snarl!

Unlike the Epic and Ikon passes, don't expect to see a roster of ski resorts chuck-full of prestigious names like Gstaad, St Moritz or Zermatt, but you'll still find places like Arolla, Crans-Montana or Saas-Fe among all the destinations offered.

So, just like for our multi-area passes, the future of the Magic pass is something that we'll follow with great interest over the next coming winters... 

When plenty of snow goes to waste...

This weekend was the last day of skiing at Park City and Deer Valley. Both resorts didn't care that it was the local kids spring break when they failed to listen to the pleas of the local community, asking for an extension of the ski season on the basis of our abundant snowpack.

It's paradoxical that early winter, our ski resorts spend millions of dollars manufacturing snow, and when it has finally accumulated in large quantities, they stop operations when they could have easily stayed open another couple of weeks.

Sure, if you're not a skier, you can't wait till the all snow melts around town. If you're passionate about skiing however, it's a totally different story. Personally, I would have loved to see both ski areas extend their operation till May, but I also realize that it would only benefit ski aficionados like me, that have long paid for their season pass, so it would mean an extra cash outlay to our lift operators without much income in return.

Further, the two resorts have no obligation to stay open past their stated closing dates. This said, both Todd Shallan and Bill Rock, the local areas bosses, should have better measured the place their respective resorts occupy within the Park City community by keeping some of their lifts running a little longer.

In doing so, they would have added to their “goodwill bank” for future needs, and thanked the locals for putting up with grid-locked streets and crowded slopes from those extra Epic and Ikon visitors. At a time when we get bombarded daily by emails and postcards asking us to renew our passes for 2019-2020, this too would have been a savvy marketing move.

Of course, I'm not suggesting keeping the entire mountain open till April 30, but just extending lift service by at least one week, or one weekend, and maintaining just a token number of chairlifts open.

Good leadership often means listening attentively and taking the customer's side. In this case, both general managers should have been the local skiers' advocates to Alterra and Vail Resorts by asking the two corporate heavy-weight to return a tiny bit to the community.

By apparently doing nothing or not convincingly forcing the issue, they've missed an opportunity to say “thanks” to all of us and, by the same token, forfeited a chance to add more appeal to the passes they're already trying to sell us for next winter.

Skiing incognito

Often times, when I return from skiing alone, my wife asks “Have you seen anyone we know”? All the time I simply respond “No”.

The only time I met someone I knew, this winter, was on the chairlift, when I rode up with Mark Seltenrich, a business associate I met in the early 90s and who successfully picked up my French accent as a mean of identification.

Several decades ago, it was fairly easy to spot friends while they were skiing on the mountain, and most particularly in a ski lift corral or on a chairlift. Today, recognizing an acquaintance while skiing slopes has become increasingly difficult, if not totally impossible.

This is due in great part to skiers wearing helmets, donning increasingly large goggles and wearing balaclavas hiding the rest of the face that used to remain exposed.

The bottom line is that we don't seem to see anyone we know when we're on the hill and it takes an individual's outfit, voice, or accent, to allow for some kind of identification.

Funny, in an era were we're losing privacy left and right, skiing is the only place were we seem to find it back!