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Why do you guys keep posting this? The only place in the country getting any natural snow is Washington. Stevens and Baker both have over 40" at the base and had early openings. All the Colorado areas are operating on man-made snow. Colorado is not and has yet to get "pounded." At it stands now, it looks like el nino is going to affect California, the Central Rockies and the NE more than the PNW.

Resorts like Tamarack, essentially in the middle of no where, cannot survive in today's economy without selling real estate. Had it begun life about three years earlier, it might have been able to weather then next 18-months of recession. But the start-up costs for a place that large necessitated robust real estate sales.

The sad fact of the matter is that we will see a number of small to mid-sized resorts and ski areas in dire financial shape next season. It's tough to pay the bills with lift tickets and over-priced food.

There are only so many securely rich people to go around. Most of them already have their second or third homes in places like Stowe, Jackson Hole, Telluride, Vail, Aspen or Sun Valley. The rest of the resorts have to fight over the crumbs. The aspirational rich, the mid-level investment bankers, doctors, non-partner lawyers, etc., the people who might decide that a place like Tamarack was an affordable and acceptable alternative to one of the legacy resorts, have or will take a financial hit sufficient enough that medium sized places like Tamarack, Northstar and Schweitzer Basin will suffer for lack of real estate sales this year and next.

Yes. But can they make you a better skier?

Don't think so. Stevens doesn't have enough snow and it may rain this weekend.

First thing patrols need to concentrate on is getting snowboarders to stop parking themselves on their backsides in the middle of runs, most of the time, it seems, just below a ridge.

"The two locations span a new North American record of 5,620 feet. That's over 300 feet higher than Blackcomb Mountain."

Actually, it's a lot more than that with the last 1,000' of vertical at Whistler-Blackcomb not worth skiing for much of the season.

They can add and/or reposition all the lifts they like. It will still be Snocrummie, and that includes Alpental.

If they really cared about women (and children and men) they'd replace their painfully slow and, probably, none to safe 40+ year old double chair lifts.

A community owned ski area is a nice concept, but not so in reality.

Don't you mean Big Mountain? So far as I know, Whitefish remains open year around.

One of the stupidest "rebrandings" in skiing history. My grandfather is spinning in his grave.

Thank god the economy's in the tank. Projects like this are ridiculous given the amount of power they consume. While not as stupid as skiing in Dubai, indoor skiing anywhere is a joke.

While a private resort like this grate on the sensibilities of some, I think if they had lowered membership fees by about half they would have made it. It's tough times all over for ski areas with neighbor Moonlight Basin reorganizing as well, and Tamarack in Idaho in the same situation.

Why? The best thing about Crystal the last two seasons has been the absence of a terrain park, which cuts down on the snowboarder riff-raff.

This is actually pretty pathetic. It's a huge waste of water and energy to cover one run top to bottom for bragging rights no one else in the business really cares about. If the state of Colorado had any sense (which of course it doesn't) they'd put an end to this. Snow making should only be used to augment or patch natural snow as necessary.