The Economics of Everyday Things
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.
00:21:17 · Andrew Gast, Zachary Crockett, Rob Goodell
[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. [00:21:32] S2: They're also looking into some more inventive sources of revenue. [00:21:36] S5: We're finding that axe throwing is actually one of those most popular things. [00:21:39] S2: What kind of revenue do you expect axe throwing to bring in? [00:21:43] S5: Probably 25 to $30,000 this first summer. [00:21:47] S2: Even with ancillary axe throwing revenue, ski areas function on tight margins. But Rob Gudell believes the one thing mountains can count on is devotees returning to the snow. [00:22:01] S3: It's the pure joy of skiing, snowboarding, being outdoors. It's a family activity. And once people get introduced to it and have that feeling, it's really unsurpassed. [00:22:16] S2: For The Economics of Everyday Things, I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy and Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz Rappson. And thanks to listener Naboishekulich, who suggested this topic. [00:22:37] S3: People love those chairs. You'll see them hanging as porch swings. [00:22:46] S2: The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.
00:22:46 · Zachary Crockett, S10, S11, S6, S7, S12
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