Slipping standards

Big business has been muscling in on skiing in North America for years, and putting profit before sport. But classic old ski towns offer so much more than sterile, modern resorts, says Stephen Wood

In October last year Sierra Club Books published Downhill Slide by Hal Clifford. A succinct précis of the book's content is provided by its subtitle: "Why the corporate ski industry is bad for skiing, ski towns and the environment".

In a text whose tone varies from regretful to accusatory, Mr Clifford describes the process, initiated in the Sixties, whereby skiing in North America developed from a marginal activity into a mainstream leisure business. He writes that during the last two decades of the 20th century big companies wrested control of the sport from a collective of small-town resorts, skiing hills, enthusiasts and ski bums, often with the tacit approval of the US Forest Service (on whose land most ski areas lie) and primarily to the benefit of investors rather than skiers.

The main targets of his criticism are the publicly quoted Vail Resorts (whose portfolio consists of Vail, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek and Keystone in Colorado, and Heavenly in California) and Intrawest (Vancouver-based owners of eight resorts including Whistler/Blackcomb and Colorado's Copper Mountain), plus the American Skiing Company (Steamboat, Killington, Sunday River in Maine and a handful of others).

The book is powerful stuff, particularly insofar as it relates to environmental issues. It generated comment in The New York Times, LA Times and USA Today, and an artless review in The Economist. The coverage prompted the Colorado Ski Country USA marketing organisation to brief its member-resorts on suitable responses to questions from the media. They included, "Mr Clifford's hallmarks are exaggeration and convenient oversight of points that contradict his perspective" and "No one we know found a copy of his book under their Christmas tree, and last time we checked it had not made the best-seller list".

Over a drink in his hometown of Telluride in Colorado, Mr Clifford told me that he had hoped his book "might start a conversation". But the ski business "didn't want that: they don't want people to think too much about what's happening". The three big corporations offered no response, but an official in the Forest Service – an organisation of which Mr Clifford is particularly critical – did request two signed copies of the book. (He was happy to oblige).

It is the expansion of the major resorts, the owners' ever-firmer grip on their exploitation and the way that the "baby-boomer" market for second homes has become their main commercial focus which most exercises Mr Clifford. He says the big corporations are "not really in the ski business any more": they are property owners and developers in the leisure business. So, unsurprisingly, they do not share Mr Clifford's romantic view that the ski towns' golden era was when outsiders were kept away "by choice, by geography, or by the nature of the local economy".

Telluride offers an interesting perspective on these matters. Its ski facilities and village belong to the scion of a Japanese company which dwarfs the owners of other resorts: Hideo Morita, son of the founder of Sony, bought the Telluride Ski and Golf company in March 2001. The proprietor of a small leisure empire – a Japanese ski resort, a Canadian fishing lodge and a couple of Pacific islands – Morita has revealed no plans for developing Telluride; but that job was done, comprehensively, by the previous owners.

Lying about 200 miles south-west of Denver, Telluride is an old mining town. Several Colorado resorts claim a similar, surviving heritage, but anyone who has been to Breckenridge, for example, will know that it now bears as much resemblance to a mining town as Covent Garden does to a fruit-and-vegetable market. Telluride is the real thing: its mining industry operated until 1970, and the town – tucked into the top of San Miguel Valley – retains both its original grid pattern and the fine Victorian buildings lining its main street. Largely created before the advent of the car, it is scaled for pedestrian use, or at best a horse-and-cart.

It is an irony Mr Clifford savours that in the early Nineties the then owners of Telluride's skiing built a new pedestrian village on the mountain. It was officially incorporated – as Mountain Village – in 1995, to free the developers of the strictures of Victorian Telluride's planning controls. The result is that in close proximity lie a classic, old ski town and a confected, corporate ski-village, built according to Intrawest's successful model.

The comparison is no contest, of course. The latter's one virtue, greater convenience, is eroded by the free gondola running up to it from Telluride, built (with federal funding) to reduce car usage in an environment whose air quality is compromised by the mountain topography. The gondola facilitates access to Mountain Village. But it works both ways, and runs into the night. So residents of the village can escape into town for the evening – and presumably do so, to judge from the number of vacant commercial premises.

How is the skiing which surrounds Mountain Village? Superb. It is a ski area – like Whistler/Blackcomb's, but on a smaller scale – where you can take it easy on wide, groomed sweeps or make it hard on steep, forested slopes, as the mood takes you. Whistler/Blackcomb's runs may have been designed with the help of a computer, but Wozzley's Way at Telluride is simply a work of art, a trail which combines all types of intermediate terrain. It hairpins off a 12,000ft peak, runs down a steep pitch on to a short, sharp mogul field, and then circumnavigates a bowl before plunging down to the lift base.

For tree skiers, the pitches range from Andy's Gold (for when you're feeling too strong) to Apex (for after you've been down Andy's Gold). There are enough moguls to last a lifetime, possibly longer if you've been a bad person. And at the end of the day the 4.6-mile Galloping Goose run stretches effortlessly down to below Mountain Village. It's a gentle ride – more of a trot – along an avenue of trees which broadens to regal proportions where it passes a collection of huge, piste-side trophy-homes.

Currently Telluride faces the threat of developments proposed above and below the town, on sites owned by the Idarado mining company and the CEO of General Atomics respectively; but Mr Clifford is now trying to keep a low profile on ski-resort expansion, at least at home. Having changed careers and become the executive director of the town's MountainFilm Festival, he is "reluctant to wear two hats", he says. "And anyway, do I really want to stir up my own nest?"

But his profile is getting higher. Could we pay for our drinks? No. The barman recognised Mr Clifford, and the drinks were on him. "I've got to read that book sometime," he added.

'Downhill Slide' is published by Sierra Club Books at $22.95. A seven-night trip to Telluride, staying in town at the New Sheridan Hotel (built in 1891), starts at £899 B&B per person – based on two sharing – from Ski Independence (0870 555 0555; www.ski-independence.co.uk). The package includes flights with United Airlines from Heathrow to Montrose (via Newark and Denver), resort transfers and all taxes