The Economics of Everyday Things
00:13:20 · Zachary Crockett, Rob Goodell
[00:13:20] S2: Ski patrol are identifiable by their red coats with white crosses. They're trained first responders and medics, ready in the event of an emergency on the mountain. They're also the ones responsible for assessing snow conditions, particularly on the steeper slopes where there's a risk of avalanches. [00:13:40] S3: This crew is very well versed in snow science and how to evaluate snow packs and it's a constant monitoring measuring. The challenge is not to allow really deep snowpack on top of unstable layers that have been there for a long time. [00:13:57] S2: At any ski area with advanced steep terrain, ski patrol will set off explosives. This is to trigger avalanches before skiers hit the slopes. [00:14:08] S3: It is a smaller handheld charge that they tie to a rope so they can throw it and know exactly where it will be placed in the trigger zone. And they have the length of the fuse, so they know to step back, get into a safe zone, and there's always a remote team watching them from afar to keep contact with them to make sure that they are well beyond harm's way. [00:14:32] S2: And then? [00:14:33] S3: Then there's a muffled boom, and hopefully snow moves and slides down when and where we want it to go as opposed to when the public is on it. [00:14:46] S2: Ski areas are usually located in remote high alpine locations that sometimes require them to source their own water and treat their own sewage. And water at a ski area isn't just for toilets. It's for snowmaking, particularly in the early season when winter storms can be scant.
00:14:46 · Zachary Crockett, Rob Goodell
[00:14:46] S2: Ski areas are usually located in remote high alpine locations that sometimes require them to source their own water and treat their own sewage. And water at a ski area isn't just for toilets. It's for snowmaking, particularly in the early season when winter storms can be scant. [00:15:06] S3: We either need compressed air and water or the power to create the compressed air and the water mix. And so that runs for miles, the pipes and the power lines up all the trails that we have snowmaking on. [00:15:21] S2: These lines connect to fan guns that spray snow over the ski slopes. [00:15:26] S3: We start making snow as soon as mother nature cooperates and gives us some temperatures. Typically, we will be ready anytime from the end of September on. We're very jealous of the ski areas back in the Eastern United States that have access to almost unlimited water supplies. But out here in the West, it's all about the water. We do have a finite amount of water that we can use to make snow, and that lasts about two months. [00:15:55] S2: Loveland is granted water rights by the state of Colorado. It's called a special use permit, and through the permit, they're granted water rights. But Loveland's water grant isn't enough for their snowmaking operations. [00:16:09] S3: We have a certain amount of rights that we own, but then we also purchase some from other right holders in the area, and it's expensive.
00:16:09 · Rob Goodell, Zachary Crockett, Andrew Gast
[00:16:09] S3: We have a certain amount of rights that we own, but then we also purchase some from other right holders in the area, and it's expensive. [00:16:20] S2: Ski areas typically own facilities like chairlifts and lodges, but they lease their land from the US Forest Service. Both Loveland in Colorado and Mount Ashland in Oregon have a forty year special use permit for the land they're on. Again, here's Andrew Gast, general manager of Mount Ashland Ski Area. [00:16:40] S5: That was signed in 2012. The permit costs a percentage of the revenue that we take in. So for every ticket that's bought, there's a part of that that goes back to the forest. [00:16:53] S2: Skiing is an inherently risky activity. And with staff members carrying explosives, liability insurance becomes a big expense. [00:17:03] S5: Our insurance amounts to about 9% of our expenses that we pay annually for the mountain. They will come several times a year, the representatives from insurance, and look at really the entire operation, the techniques that ski patrol is using, explosives. They look at the maintenance of the chairlifts and are they up to code, really all of our equipment. Even down to they'll look at in the rental shop, the ski bindings on the skis. Have they been tested? How are those things maintained? [00:17:31] S2: Property insurance is a major consideration as well.
00:17:31 · Zachary Crockett, Rob Goodell
[00:17:31] S2: Property insurance is a major consideration as well. [00:17:35] S3: At least a third of our mountain is above tree line, but most skiers are very heavily wooded. And with the wildfire risk throughout the West and, well, all across the country, the property insurance is high because it's a large exposure. [00:17:50] S2: The equipment that is most exposed at a ski area and that is covered by both property and liability insurance is the chairlift. A lift involves two loading zones, one at the bottom of the lift and one at the top, with cables and chairs strung between large towers. It's responsible for ushering thousands of people, including young children, up the mountain all day in all weather conditions, And they can range in costs from hundreds of thousands to over $10,000,000 depending on their capacity and speed. [00:18:24] S3: We have 10 lifts. It takes about 70 employees to man those on a daily basis, seven days a week. There's a whole separate lift maintenance staff that is responsible for making sure all safety systems are operational. [00:18:42] S2: Traditional chairlifts transport skiers uphill at about 2.8 meters per second. The newer models with detachable chairs are about twice as fast. A faster lift can increase capacity and help a ski area's bottom line. Some ski areas, like Loveland, are choosing to upgrade their chairs to high speed lifts. Mount Ashland is not.
00:18:42 · Zachary Crockett, Andrew Gast
[00:18:42] S2: Traditional chairlifts transport skiers uphill at about 2.8 meters per second. The newer models with detachable chairs are about twice as fast. A faster lift can increase capacity and help a ski area's bottom line. Some ski areas, like Loveland, are choosing to upgrade their chairs to high speed lifts. Mount Ashland is not. [00:19:06] S5: The high speed detachable lifts are much more expensive to install. They're more expensive to maintain, and their lifespan is significantly lower. We have one chairlift that's currently sixty one years old now, but the lifespan of a high speed detachable lift is only about twenty five years. The capacity of dumping more people onto the top of a chairlift for us is an issue. We're a small mountain, and so we want to manage the capacity, the number of people that are getting to that top of that chairlift in a certain amount of time. [00:19:35] S2: Gast says Mount Ashland recently installed a new chairlift. The nonprofit spent over $3,000,000 total, $2,000,000 for the lift itself, and an additional million for installation, trail braking, and lighting. [00:19:50] S5: It's a really complicated process. It starts with the engineering and having folks who really understand all the technicalities of hanging chair carriers in the air and moving them in tough conditions. [00:20:01] S2: Engineers have to do survey work on the ground to plan the chairlift's route. Then they dig the foundations for the metal towers.
00:20:01 · Zachary Crockett, Andrew Gast
[00:20:01] S2: Engineers have to do survey work on the ground to plan the chairlift's route. Then they dig the foundations for the metal towers. [00:20:10] S5: The foundations are really, really deep. And they'll set the forms, pour concrete in those forms, and then they'll attach the towers. And those could be either done with cranes, which is what we did on this chairlift because it was really close to our lodge. We plan to build two other chairlifts here in the near future, and those will use helicopters both for concrete and lowering the towers. [00:20:31] S2: Once the chair lift is fully installed, it's checked for safety. [00:20:35] S5: We ran it for about a hundred hours with no people to test it to make sure it was safe to operate. [00:20:42] S2: When a ski area replaces a chair lift, they can usually part out the old one on the secondary market. [00:20:49] S5: What we can do is basically auction off each of the chairs from those chairlifts to our own community, and we'll probably raise, you know, 250 to $300,000 just from doing that, which is more than what selling it off privately would earn us. [00:21:06] S2: Small mountains like Mount Ashland are always on the lookout for additional revenue streams. Two years ago, the ski area began to keep its restaurants open for summer visitors. [00:21:17] S5: There's a lot of trail running. There's a lot of hiking that goes on. Our goal is to kinda be a hub for all those people. We started introducing summer camps. Those are for kids eight to 13 years old. We did those last year, and we'll do more sessions this year.