Heavenly Valley Ski Resort in California recently paid a $120,000 fine for waste violations mostly related to used oil. It seems they failed to have their used oil tank inspected, maintain a secondary tank, train people on what to do in the event of an emergency, and lacked the means to prevent spillage on their [ more... ]

This Friday the CEO of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows will be on CBS’s TV show Undercover Boss, where the head of a normally faceless organization goes undercover to see how the other 99% lives. You know, slum it with the employees in the trenches for a few hours before taking the private elevator back to [ more... ]

Skiers who rode Sunrise Park Resort in Arizona last month reported becoming infected with Norovirus, the normally cruise-ship-related virus that is “often transmitted by fecally-contaminated food or water; by person-to-person contact, and through the air.” The highly contagious virus does well in cruise ships that are closed in spaces with very high densities of people [ more... ]

Two Salt Lake brothers were arraigned on fraud charges for raising millions of dollars to develop a ski area at a members-only resort. They sold the idea of converting Elk Meadows ski resort to investors, but the conversion failed to materialize and one of the two has been charged with failing to inform the investors [ more... ]

June Lake, California is town of 600 people with a ski resort. More than their identity, it’s their biggest employer requiring about 200 part-time employees during ski season. Last week Mammoth Mountain Ski Area announced that it’d close down the June Mountain ski area, at least for the 2012-13 season. With so many in the [ more... ]

Seven years after installing a one-mile high-speed lift at Tamarack Resort in Idaho the man who put up the lift is taking it back down. The resort and real estate developer hasn’t paid Bank of America since 2010. The bank is taking back the lift. Tamarack was created as a ski destination by the Frenchman [ more... ]

The family of a man who died while skiing by himself at Colorado’s Winter Park Resort is suing Intrawest Winter Park Operations Corporation, the company that owns the resort. The slide was inbounds in the Trestle Trees area, 40 feet wide and 60 vertical feet long. The man was found buried about two feet deep. [ more... ]

If you’ve ever looked at a massive ski resort represented on a tiny fold-up map while helplessly lost, perhaps you took a moment to marvel at the artistry of the map? If so, you can thank James Niehues for your moment of quiet reflection. The man has painted all of the major ski resort maps [ more... ]

Despite the ebb and flow of the stock market and concerns over our future ability to employ ourselves ski resorts are reporting strong bookings for this coming ski season. Early bookings are up about 17% according to the Denver-based Mountain Travel Research Program. It remains to be seen how quickly the backcountry will get tracked [ more... ]

A man in Germany strolled up the country’s highest cable car route covering 3,300 feet in about an hour-and-a-half. He gained about 1,110 feet in elevation during the stunt and plans to submit it for some obscure longest-walk-above-sea-level-without-pole Guinness Record. Perhaps more remarkable are these three guys riding bikes around on top of a tram [ more... ]