Will skiing survive? Resorts struggle through a winter of climate and housing woes

Climate change is putting the business model of luxury ski areas under scrutiny.

Kirk Siegler/NPR

On a recent Sunday, the parking lot of I 70 was filled with cars. It is like this a lot. SUVs with ski rack choke the thoroughfare alongside scores of idling semi-trucks, belching out an untold amount of smog into the pristine high country that everyone is escaping the city to play in.

During a pit stop for gas, the skier said that traffic is ruining the integrity of skiing.

It can take five or more hours to travel sixty miles on a weekend night. She and others stuck in traffic were aware of the irony of burning fossil fuels to get to skiing in the winter.

It makes us sad about the future of skiing and what it will mean for people and the environment.

The last winter was supposed to be a rebound for the ski industry. Climate change, labor shortages, and long lift lines have made getaways less attractive.

The business model of resorts, which rely on a more luxury clientele who often have to drive long distances burning fossil fuels or fly in on private jets, is under scrutiny.

A huge carbon footprint.

There has been a marked increase in private jet traffic at the tiny Aspen airport. There were a dozen planes on the tarmac and two more waiting to take off. Several looked like regional commercial carriers.

Roger Marolt, a local accountant and former ski racer, says that the carbon footprint here is huge.

In his local newspaper column, Marolt complains about how the ski industry has recently shifted toward the ultra wealthy. Winters like this, where the snow came all at once, followed by six weeks of dry weather, cause reflection.

I feel like a hypocrite because I love skiing, but it does give me a bit of a cringe.

Call us hypocrites.

In the past, Aspen has been used to being the punching bag for Russian billionaires.

Many large resorts stayed focused on traditional marketing strategies while the resort was seen as an industry leader on climate.

Auden Schendler, senior vice president forsustainability at the Aspen Skiing Company, said that they should be called hypocrites if they aren't doing that work.

Schendler led efforts to get the valley's local utility to stop using fossil fuel-powered electricity. The Ski Co has a clean power plant. They joined a lawsuit defending the Biden administration's temporary freeze on new oil and gas leasing on public land.

Schendler says that the fossil fuel industry wants us to do that.

He is lobbying Congress to revive the President Biden's plan to transition the country to cleaner energy.

A gondola car is melting?

At the top of the Aspen Mountain gondola, Schendler lumbers in his ski boots over packed snow a few yards to a popular spot for photographing the dramatic Elk Mountains. The gondola car is tilted on the snow.

It looks like you took a gondola cabin and put it on a hot street and it melted like a scoop of ice cream.

The exhibit is meant to be alarmist and catch the attention of Aspen's powerful and moneyed guests, and the resort's corporate sponsors, pushing them to action.

I have always been concerned that warming would end the ski industry. We will be the last resort, because you and I are at 11,000 feet. That doesn't help us. If the mom and pop ski resort in Jersey goes away, those are our future clients.

After a dry and warm January and February, this Spring Break season is critical for western resorts. On a recent afternoon, Jacob Phillip, who is visiting Aspen from California to celebrate his birthday, had not noticed the melting gondola as he got off the real one.

There are a lot of concerns that I have right now in life, in the United States, in Los Angeles where we live.

The temperature in Aspen has risen by 3 degrees F.

The ski season for Phillip is about a month shorter. The temperature in the Colorado Rockies has gone up since 1980.

In my lifetime here in Aspen, we have lost thirty frozen days, but we have 30 more frost free days than we used to.

She says that means less early season snow-making to help resorts open by Christmas, but more critically, it means less water for the West and more destructive wildfires. Aspen leaders temporarily banned new residential construction and applications for short term rentals because of the climate crisis. Perl says that many workers have to drive in to build and maintain free market luxury homes that stay empty most of the year.

Our workforce comes from a long way away to keep this town running, that comes with emissions from traffic, and our visitors come on our private jets which have a lot of emissions associated with it.

Things have felt tense this winter because of the affordable housing crisis and climate anxiety. A Russian born billionaire paid $76 million for a one acre plot at the bottom of the mountain.

A local skier at the top of the Aspen Mountain gondola was getting ready for his descent down the mountain into town when he noticed that huge corporate conglomerates were taking over skiing.

When there is no snow left in the Rockies, the ultra rich will just go somewhere else, leaving locals like him to worry about the future of their community and skiing.

He doesn't know if March will be the snowiest month.

March has delivered some badly needed snow to resorts in the Rockies, at least some solace for the die hard skiers that there may be some winter left.