You wouldn’t pay for our crappy, overpriced ski resort homes at Idaho’s Tamarack Resort and Montana’s Yellowstone Club? Well, we want the money anyway. Two resorts that developed the hell out of their property and then didn’t sell anything are seeking to win back some money from Credit Suisse. They’re saying the bank engaged in predatory lending and overinflated the value of these supposed investments.

You can sue for making bad choices now? It’s so nice that no one’s responsible for their own decisions anymore.

Intense snowfall during the day meant that about 250 skiers and snowboarders were told to head to the Mt Lyford lodge and stay put until further notice. Then further notice didn’t arrive until the next morning. Overnight they shared a couple mattresses between snacks and waiting for the power to come back on. After some avalanche control work authorities let people leave in packs of ten cars. Why 10 cars at a time? I suppose they weren’t 100% sure that an avalanche wasn’t going to bury the road, so they’d have fewer cars to dig out if it happened. I hope they also let them drive as fast as they wanted.

The widow of a man who died in an in-bounds avalanche at Jackson Hole is seeking a trial. Her husband had signed a release at Jackson Hole weeks before when he bought a season pass, and Wyoming has a recreational law that releases ski resorts and other recreation providers from liability. The woman is seeking a jury trial on the grounds that this accident is not covered by the release or Wyoming’s recreational law because the resorts decision to open the ski run was so wantonly reckless.

Among other claims, she says that resort management was putting pressure on the ski patrol to open certain sections of the mountain that had been closed for a couple days prior. This is one of the choice quotes from the discovery phase of the trial:

“When asked if he ever felt pressure from his boss (because of the costs and loss of revenue from the runs being closed) to go ahead and open the mountain, Jake Elkins admitted that he did feel this pressure from Jerry Blann,” the brief says. “In fact, the afternoon before Nodine was killed, the president of JHMR, Jerry Blann, asked Mr. Elkins, the head of ski patrol: ‘Can we get that f—— lift open this afternoon?’ Not surprisingly, Mr. Elkins made the decision to open the lift in question the following morning, and David Nodine was killed.”

Read the rest of the article at the Jackson Hole News and Guide.

The owners of the Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort are seeking U.S. Forest Service permission to expand their 70-acre ski resort to 500 acres with 50 trails and 10 lifts. The $32 million plan seems especially ambitious considering that Las Vegas can’t even afford to finish their downtown city center monstrosity. The idea of a ski resort near Vegas is baffling. You go to Vegas to drink beer and lose money at craps, then maybe you take a day off to climb Red Rocks if you’re going to do anything outdoorsy. You want to ski on vacation? You go to Utah or Colorado. People don’t usually bookend gambling benders with a day on the slopes.

A New York ski area trying to recover from a devastating fire and a terrible website has been struck another massive blow - teenage vandals. Two local kids have admitted to tearing up the ski resort’s lodge and lift shacks after police confronted them. It seems they thought the buildings were going to be torn down post-fire/terrible-website, so they decided to have some fun. Bummer for them, there can’t be much to do in these little towns over the winter but ski or snowboard - it’s going to be a lonely few winters.