Ah, the good old days of cheap lift tickets and authentic mountain culture, before corporations ruled the world—who doesn’t remember them with nostalgia? Writer Gordon Laforge certainly does. His latest piece for Slate serves up a healthy dose of that nostalgia, as well as a sobering analysis of how much the ski resort experience has changed from what we once knew and loved.
As the long arm of Vail Resorts continues to sweep new ski resorts into its corporate embrace—most recently, Crans-Montana in the Swiss Alps—it’s well worth taking a look at how we got here. For anyone interested in how the modern ski resort experience (mostly in North America, but with tendrils creeping into Australia, Japan and now Europe) became a global business owned and fought over by vast conglomerates, Gordon Laforge’s in-depth analysis is a must-read.