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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

>IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts.

Almost impossible given environmental constraints. (Whether one agrees or disagrees.) Even expanding existing resorts is tough. And it's not clear the economics are there given demographics even leaving aside any climate change factors.

ADDED: More rural towns with very limited facilities may be possible given Starlink, etc. But they're not going to be world-class ski resorts or what most people think of as the associated mountain towns.

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I grew up in the Rockies in the Wyoming/Montana area. There is absolutely enough open mountain space to open more resorts. There are ski resorts open now that are not doing that well financially.

The problem is not the mountain side ski hills, it’s access to the flow of rich people. Ski resorts 2 hours from the Bozeman airport struggle because that’s too inconvenient.

The ski towns that suffer from these problems are a small minority of ski resorts that meet the criteria of:

- town actually right next to a ski resort (many ski resorts don’t have a convenient town attached)

- airport with commercial flights to major hubs within 45 min to an hour drive at most

I don't disagree with any of that. Though I'd point out that just because there's lots of open mountain space doesn't mean it would be anything like straightforward to get the permits to develop and operate a destination ski resort there.

But, as you say, a lot of destination ski resorts don't even really have an associated town at all or they have a somewhat distributed sprawl of related properties and they're inconvenient to get to. Even most of the Colorado resorts aren't especially quick to get to from commercial flights. And if you don't have a destination resort (or other) you just have a small rural town that may not have much in the way of jobs in the first place.

While there have actually been more small ski areas created since than I would have expected, it looks as if Deer Valley is the newest major resort from the early 80s--and that's in a town that already existed and already had an associated major ski area.

Not to mention the quality of the attraction itself -- there are plenty of B-level Colorado "resorts" that most upper middle class won't bat an eyelash at because the vert/terrain/natural snowpack just isn't as good as what you'd get in, say, Breck.

I'm pretty sure

> the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts

was meant as a strawman.

Maybe. Certainly there are enough people on these pages promoting all sorts of unrealistic BUILD BUILD BUILD programs in all sorts of contexts that it's hard to tell the difference between satire and something else.

Like the person you're responding to, I didn't get that impression.

I’m sure that environmental concerns are a factor, but ski lifts and snowmaking aren’t cheap, there are plenty of reasons why making a new ski area is daunting.

The main environmental constraint I’ve seen is rain in December wiping out all the manufactured snow killing the holiday season. (I am talking about New England so YMMV)

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