What's a snow “interconnect”?

It's simply a network of ski towns that are linked together to immerse skiers and snowboarders into a full mountain experience and a deep sense of adventure.

With modern gear and snow grooming, it becomes possible for most winter visitors to venture for long distances into the mountains, appreciate all of their beauty with minimum impact on nature and capture memories that will last a lifetime.

It's a re-invention of winter sports for our times, in perfect harmony with nature and its wonders. It offers visitors one convenient single lift ticket using RFID technology.

Les Portes du Soleil - Click on image to enlarge

For those who have never experienced skiing or riding from village to village, it can be very hard to imagine. It's a bit like describing the latest iPhone to someone who only knows a 1950 transistor radio; both can play music, but the former does it better and can handle a host of extra functions...

Interconnects have existed in the Alps since the 70's and have now become the standard of the European winter experience, with France offering the most networked mountain resorts. That's right, just like with high-speed trains, France leads the way with snow interconnects; consider this:

• There are 30 interconnects in the French Alps, including over 100 ski resorts, 1,845 lifts (almost half of what's available in the country)

• They cater to 40 million skier days compared to a 2008 total of 59 million (we had 60.5 million that same year in the USA)

• The offer 875,000 visitor "pillows" (vs. 1.5 million for all French ski resorts)

The largest interconnect is Les Trois Vallées found in the Savoy region of France. Totally seamless (no shuttle required) it regroups 8 resorts, has 205 lifts and covers 55,000 acres. Slope sameness might be the weak point of that large network anchored by Courchevel's fame and luxury. Designed to be linked from the get go, these connected resorts have grown organically over the years and have set the standard.

Just behind the largest seamless interconnect, stands Paradiski, a 45,000 acre behemoth that is the sum of two gigantic clusters of villages constituting the resorts of Les Arcs and La Plagne. One valley-crossing tram links the two areas, but requires visitors to take off their boards during the ride...

Boasting 40,000 acres, Les Portes du Soleil is another network of resorts that straddles the French-Swiss border, equipped with 195 lifts and that unites 7 French and 4 Swiss resorts. Scenic variety and borderless flair is the hallmark of Les Portes du Soleil. Access to one of the villages requires shuttle access, which makes the interconnect not quite as seamless as Les Trois Vallées.

To date, the only linkage inspired from these European behemoths is the Big Sky Resort-Moonlight Basin interconnect, near Bozeman, Montana, that offers 5,512 acres of lift-served skiing and snowboarding.

Although not an interconnect, Dolomiti Superski is a large collection of ski villages using a common lift ticket. Located in Northern Italy, it includes 12 resorts, and 450 lifts. This association of resorts requires road travel between them.

What's in it for Travel Professionals?

Tour operators and all travel professionals are always looking for a product that's either brand new, totally different or “enchanting.” They also have meet their clients' conflicting wants, needs and resources. Having a product that is flexible, large, and unique makes their selling a lot easier and is the most likely to gain them satisfied and thus “return” customers... A Wasatch front “Snow Interconnect” will bring them:

• An easy way to close a sale when clients are torn between products that are far too similar


• An easy answer to the “what's new this season?” question


• An even easier answer to the “what's best?” or “what's the largest?” question, season after season


• A huge flexibility in building packages; same slopes and runs but vast variety of options in terms of location, amenities, style and cost
  


• A significant differentiation for a new American product with features and benefits that have been proven in Europe for almost four decades...

"The mere announcement of a Park City interconnect would generate a tremedous 'buzz'..." - Mike Beltracchi

Time is of the essence

"The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step."
Lao Tzu

I have lived in Park City for almost a quarter of century and every now and then heard about the “interconnect.” The Olympics have come and gone and so has the latest real-estate boom and still nothing is coming with regard to linking our resorts.

"A good reason to begin now is that planning and getting permits take time..."

Bad economic times come and go and so do meager snow years. Having our seven resorts networked and offering a superior on-snow experience for out-of-state visitors is our best insurance policy against such lean times. The idea however, is that it must be ready when these moments strike. Now is an opportunity for hearing that "wake-up call" and finally getting ready for the future, whether the rough passage we're are experiencing now lasts for a long while or returns under one form or another in five or ten years from now...

Besides, do we want to wait until some other group of mountain resorts steal our “thunder” and take the leadership position we thought could be ours? It's another reason why we need to begin now. Planning and getting permits take time, especially when dealing with Forest Services; starting now instead of later will get us there much faster. The three pillars of success are innovation, leadership and sense of urgency. Do we really want to succeed?

Synergy? Show me the numbers!

Interconnecting our seven resorts will have a highly positive impact on the local economy by increasing visitors/day during traditionally low-occupancy periods. The following table makes several assumptions based on more than thirty years of data collected as well as observations of European interconnects that were assembled as they were already long time, stand-alone operations:

The first one is that – without interconnect – visitations will plateau to the estimated number of 2008/2009 visitors/days. The table is meant to show the incremental visitation resulting from linking the resorts. The figures are estimates extrapolated from Ski Utah's 3,972,984 visitor days during the 2008/2009 season.

"...by the completion of the interconnect, the number of visitors/days will have more than doubled"

The second is that whenever Phase 1 begins, it is followed each year by another phase as described in the previous chapter.

Click on table to enlarge

What this table shows is that by the completion of the interconnect (phase 4), the number of visitors/days will have more than doubled for the participating resorts.

Later, more-than-average growth will continue as shown on Year 5 and will eventually grow with the overall market after Year 8; at that point, it will have dramatically closed the gap with Colorado, once the Wasatch Front interconnect's notoriety is fully recognized and established.

This spectacular growth will be mostly fueled by increased visitations during the shoulder season periods (pre-Christmas and late spring) as well as during the other low periods of the season (January to President's Week, end of February through Spring Breaks and Easter).

Optimized capacity and subsequent increased economic activity will help fund sensible mass-transit systems able to accommodate the uptick in visitations while minimizing any impact on our pristine mountain environment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What's already linked?
A. Alta and Snowbird are already connected and offer the "AltaBird," a common pass and free skiers circulation between both resorts. That significant step forward already goes back to 2001, with Snowbird shouldered the lion’s share of the costs in developing Mineral Basin and building two quad lifts to connect to Alta.
One canyon away, Brighton and Solitude also offer a common lift ticket, the "SolBright" pass and free circulation from one resort to the other, but this linkage has not been much publicized and few skiers and snowboarders are aware of it....

Q. How can resorts share revenue from one single ticket?
A. Computerized processing of lift tickets actually started with the Alpine interconnects, in 1977 when two Austrians, Leopold Lutz and Guenther Walcher came up with the idea for replacing traditional ski passes with a system that would support automated processing from a variety of portals at different resorts. This means that at the end of each day, month or season, all the interconnected lifts are tracked for usage and the proceeds of the common ticket are pro-rated based on the actual traffic and distributed accordingly to each operator. Since 1987, wireless technology has been added to the system for real-time validation of any pass sold and automated control and validation through card-reading portals.

Q. Why has no significant network been built yet?
A. Even though interconnected mountain resorts have been in existence - and thrived - in Europe since the late sixties and early seventies, Utah resort operators have not known enough about them to emulate the system. The most important factor however is fear of the unknown and fear of losing control. Fear of losing customers to less successful resort partners in the network is also often cited as major obstacle. Also, inertia, indifference, lack of leadership and procrastination are other significant hurdles to proceeding forward. Finally, the American winter visitor has largely been left in the dark about this alternative form of "adventure" skiing and riding and because of it, is not demanding that leap forward...

Q. What's the "Ski Utah Interconnect Tour?"
A. At the moment, this is a 25 miles backcountry tour between Deer Valley and Snowbird or Snowbird and Deer Valley, available on a guided basis only. It's available, weather permitting, to a select few adult skiers (advance to expert) that can afford its relatively high cost ($250 per person plus tip.)

Q. Is each resort's personality at risk of homogenization?
A. This concern has not proved to materialize in Europe, where in a given interconnect, each ski town has held on to its character. In fact, the opposite often happen, where resorts develop their own “specialties” like mogul skiing in Deer Valley, parks in Park City, ski-only in Alta and Deer Valley, etc.

Q. What impact could a 7-resort interconnect have on the environment?
A. Skiers and snowboarders have negligible impact on the environment per se. In fact, they generally cause much less physical harm than hikers or mountain bike riders do, the rest of the year.
Most importantly, linking resorts will lessen the skiers/snowboarders density per acre and also provide an opportunity to rethink the access to each resort, greatly reducing vehicular traffic by stimulating park-and-ride locations in conjunction with new means of mass-transit as well as other types of “people movers” that will lessen the impact of automobiles into our canyons.

Q. Can Colorado, Tahoe or BC respond to Utah's interconnect?
A. They may actually steal Utah's “thunder” if nothing gets done rapidly. This would hamper the attention Utah could receive if it developed its interconnect after competitors have already attempted something similar (and probably much smaller) elsewhere in North America. Likely candidates are Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley in California, and Vail-Minturn-Beaver Creek in Colorado. Aside from Whistler-Blackcomb, other Canadian resorts are spread apart too much to consider practical linkages. Utah still has the opportunity of making a huge splash by being the first in the game and by offering a product very hard to match elsewhere in North America.

Q. How are visitor days counted?
A. "Skier days" include all day and multi-day lift tickets, whether paid or not. Those are fairly easy to tally. Some areas scan season passes and count them that way, which is also fairly accurate. But other areas, including many smaller ones, estimate pass visits, with varying degrees of accuracy. However, so long as they use the same method every year, even the estimates provide a fairly accurate year-to-year comparison. The specific numbers might be off, but they tend to be off by close to the same amount each year. And that makes year-to-year comparisons more accurate than one might expect.

What's in it for mountain resorts?

Mountain operators have a lot to gain by linking their facilities. This in fact is one of the true, and most demonstrable effect of synergy. It also seems that there's a desirable “critical mass” to obtain highly productive results. A twin partnership like Alta-Snowbird or Brighton-Solitude can only bring some incremental business; however, volume will be considerably magnified when more than three or four resorts become networked. Regardless of this consideration, the advantages of getting together are many as well as attractive...

• Increases each individual resort visitation as interconnect notoriety grows (a true synergistic effect, not a “zero sum game.”)
  
  
• Upon completion, the participating resorts could see their aggregate visitations double and a few year later, Utah's visitations would close the gap with Colorado.

• Greater participants' retention, as the product offers endless variety, is more diverse and brings a "discovery" dimension to the ski/riding experience.

• Provides a healthy emulation with regards to infrastructures and amenities (restaurants, ski/snowboard schools, terrain parks, lifts, etc.)

• Affords a certain amount of “specialization”, like terrain parks in Park City, “ski only” zones in Alta and Deer Valley, treeless runs in Snowbird, etc. Each area finding and developing its niche as time goes on on

• Finally offers a competitive alternative to potential European visitors

• Spreads week-end crowds around (from “local” to “destination” mountains)

• Gets the State of Utah's full attention as a united and worthwhile interest group for more state funded mass-transit solutions

• The interconnect does not increase the user's "consumption" of lift rides (11,532 vertical feet a day on average) and the premium paid for multi-area ticket increases the operators' bottom line.

• Provides a great reason to re-energize group ski school activities, like group lessons with an “adventure” theme that still is a hot seller at European interconnects

What's in it for the local business community?

We're talking about tourism-oriented business, like hospitality, retail, and a host of goods and services that gravitate around recreation and visitations to our mountain resorts...

• Upon completion of the interconnect, participating resorts could see their aggregate visitations double and keep growing faster than the market for three to four years after that...

• Product newness and uniqueness producing huge editorial coverage, free publicity, notoriety and users' referrals through word of mouth reputation
  

• Minimizes the ups and downs of "shoulder" and "low" season time periods

• Grows and strengthens Park City and associated resorts' reputation with a unique product that has no continental competition

• Provides a “leadership” umbrella that emulates leading edge ideas and business models

• For communities like Park City, an interconnect offers a substantial dimension of “snow insurance” when early season snow is light and as Big and Little Cottonwood options are directly accessible from Park City.

• When "smart mass transit" becomes reality, this will allow some of the work force to live more reasonably in the Valley and reliably commute to and from the resorts
  

• Affords easier packaging with multi-area lift tickets available

About mountain funiculars

If most funiculars are primarily designed for urban use, a few European resorts use them solely for winter sports. This type of lift might prove well adapted to move skiers, snowboarders and hikers to the valley floors of Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons, freeing road traffic and still able to operate day and night regardless of weather conditions.

Funival lower station. The tunnel into the mountain can be seen in the distance

Funival's ride is mostly underground, through a narrow tunnel, with wider middle section allowing both sets of cars to meet.

There are three such lifts in the Alps used for accessing slopes or even a glacier: Les Deux Alpes, Val d'Isère and Tignes. Built in 1987, Val d'Isère's “Funival” climbs mostly underground into the mountain a vertical just under 3,000 feet and is 7,500 feet long. Capaciy is 2,425 skiers per hour, while speed is 40 ft/second.

From Bourg-Saint-Maurice's train station, the "Arc-en-Ciel" funicular tracks climb the mountain above.

The "Arc-en-Ciel" crossing the river Isère

The "Arc-en-Ciel" funicular, built in the late 80's, is almost 10,000 feet long and is used to access Les Arcs, a ski resort, also at 40 ft/second, from Bourg Saint Maurice, a small city that is also a main railroad terminal located 2,700 feet below on the valley floor.

View from the top with Bourg-Saint-Maurice down in the valley

What's in it for the locals?

By far our local population (Park City and the Wasatch Front) would stand to draw huge benefits from a seamless network of resorts.

• Very best skiing and riding experience in the Continent

• Added backcountry access and opening the experience to more people, not just a select few

• Less vehicular traffic in and out of town

• Greater environmental protection of our community

• More vibrant community with sustained and abundant jobs as well as business opportunities

• Pride of living in the most advanced ski town in North America that combines the best mountain experience with the most environmentally-friendly approach to business and tourism
  

• More local tax receipts, thus continued great services, amenities and quality of life

...there's also a "snowboarding only" pass without access to Alta and Deer Valley

Is an interconnect needed?

If we believe in smart innovation and want to maintain a vibrant tourism economy, the answer is yes.

Heightened competition and economic ups and downs are maintaining a clear and present pressure on ski towns. Without a major competitive advantage, staying in the game is hard and the best efforts often yield minimal results. It comes down to economics where growing market share is key, but generally come at a very high cost.

A fully operative network of resorts would require a small investment for enormous future returns and would make a Utah winter sports destination a temptation very hard to resist and a truly unique product because it's unlikely to be replicated anywhere in North America.

Salt Lake Airport to Park City: A smooth 20 minute ride...

Skiers and snowboarders will want to experience the “adventure-style,” village-to-village discovery that only linked resorts can offer. Most importantly, they'll return after they've tasted it; the experience is highly addictive, as the Alpine interconnect experience has shown.

Easy access, the major current benefit for coming to Utah for skiing or riding, can also be enhanced in the process with more mass-transit (rail, funicular) made available to complement the infrastructure and allow for an environmentally sound car-free vacation experience.

Eventually, some mountain operators will patch over to other lifts, like Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley in California, Vail, Minturn and Beaver Creek and even perhaps Breckenridge and Copper in Colorado, but these will pale in comparison to what a Wasatch seamless snowfield will be able to deliver.

Of course, If asked, the same resorts in Colorado, Tahoe or British Columbia, would never, never want to see the creation of an interconnect in Utah, but deep inside, they probably all fear that it's only a matter of time...

How would it work in Utah?

While there seems to be very few possibilities of linking neighboring mountain resorts in North America, except for the existing Whistler-Blackcomb twin-mountain setup, Utah offers the ideal situation to replicate what has been created in multiple European locations. In fact, a linking the closest seven resorts of the Wasatch Front would vault Utah into the world's top six interconnects! The areas are Deer Valley, Park City and The Canyon on the North side of the Wasatch.Brighton and Solitude in Big Cottonwood Canyon as well as Alta and Snowbird in Little Cottonwood Canyon. For the moment, Deer Valley seems the least motivated to link up with other resorts (ski only policy, limited restaurant space, capped number of skiers on peak days and often a Ski Magazine readers survey's number one). Alta and Snowbird (Altabird) as well as Brighton and Solitude (Solbright) are already interconnected.There's more to it than just joining lifts however; if properly thought out, a linkage via lifts of all sorts could also significantly reduce vehicular traffic up and down our canyons and make up for a more pristine environment while limiting the overall "carbon footprint" due to skiing and snowboarding activities.

"Thinking big could also mean thinking clean..."

“Connecting the dots” in the Wasatch would present the ideal opportunity to:

• Create the most attractive and unique winter mountain experience in North America for both locals and visitors

• Maintain a healthy local economy by keeping a steady stream of visitors through the high, low and shoulder seasons

• Enhance the overall access to our mountain resorts and minimizing gridlock

• Further reduce any environmental impact snow sports might have on our mountain ecosystem

If we're still able to "think big" and "think clean, " and if the right funding vehicles are found, a "mountain train" could be envisioned to wrap-up the package; it would be running from the Salt Lake City airport, to downtown Salt Lake and then to a major "park & ride" location near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon:

Click to enlarge image

From that point, the train would become largely underground and offer a stop in Snowbird, cross from Little to Big Cottonwood Canyon into Solitude, cross again into the mountain and terminate in Park City.

Major interconnects

What follows is a table listing the 15 largest network of winter sport resorts in the Alps. There are many more, but all are smaller. Larger connections, including Utah's seven closest areas, fall generally within a 10 x 10 mile square (64,000 acres,) but their actual skiable/ridable acreage is significantly less than that.

Interconnecting resorts has become a necessity in order to compete for winter visitors.

Stand-alone North American resorts, as we know them, would be at a huge disadvantage in Europe, which among other reasons, explain why it's been so hard to attract and retain European skiers and snowboarders into the United States.

Click on table to enlarge

The "Detroit syndrome"

Choosing not to change when faced with compelling evidence to do so could be likened to a form of death wish; under these circumstances, it's not unusual that bad things happen while the actors know they're in full control of the process, see time running in slow motion, grasp the most minute detail with intense clarity, yet feel totally paralyzed and can't do anything to rectify a situation that's going bad. This in many ways is what happened to our Detroit automakers that knew since 1973 that fuel efficiency would become a vital issue, but chose to ignore it, while fighting “Cafe” standards as hard as they possibly could. At the same time, GM came with a first version of the “electric car” and chose to kill it for no good reason. Toyota's Prius would soon fill the vacuum...

This syndrome is found in government, organizations and companies... This is also what's preventing our seven-resort interconnect from happening. So what is causing that “mental block” that stands in the way of change? Is it, as we often suspect, fear or is it also denial, disbelief, apathy, laziness and over-sized egos? I'd vote for a combination of all these factors with much weight placed on the latter. Now, the challenge is to find a clever way to clear the blockage and to move toward a goal that's in everyone's best interest.

Perhaps a “quiet revolution” will eventually change minds and advance the agenda. The best revolutions are generally short on arm-twisting and long on persuasion. When conventional wisdom has become too slow, too predictable or too comfortable, and when too many folks feel they have no control on the general outcome, it's time to start a gentle revolution. It could take the form of a sudden groundswell of “consumer demand” and a create a significant shift in views. When a growing number of highly determined folks becomes too hard to ignore and is eventually taken into consideration, the Wasatch seven-resort interconnect will begin to get traction and nothing will be able to stop it!