Alberta Wants to Be More Like British Columbia. America Should Too

Are we really going to sit here while Canada kicks our ass?

From backwater to global beacon

Thirty years ago, British Columbia was home to exactly two 1,500-plus-acre ski areas: one was Whistler, the other was Blackcomb. Sun Peaks covered all of 783 acres; Kimberley, 425; Panorama, 300. Kicking Horse was a town bump called Whitetooth served by one T-bar and a double chair. Revelstoke, then know as Mount Mackenzie, had a ropetow, a T-bar, and two double chairs running up 2,000 feet of vert.

Today, B.C. may well be the epicenter of quality North American skiing, home to 11 ski resorts topping 1,500 acres. Whistler-Blackcomb is a united, 8,171-acre monster. Sun Peaks is the second-largest ski area in Canada, with 4,270 acres over three peaks. Kimberley has blown up to 1,800 acres; Panorama to nearly 3,000. Revelstoke has erupted to 5,620 vertical feet, the tallest rise on the continent. Kicking Horse, now 4,314 vertical feet sprawling over 3,400 acres, is an international freeride destination. Most of these resorts run modern lift fleets and rise from a densely developed base area. Individually or as a collective, they rival anything in the United States.

This evolution happened on purpose. The provincial government, determined to transform B.C. into a global tourism destination, made its public lands available to resort developers starting in the mid-1990s. Private parties with clearly articulated visions and the means to finance them would be granted long-term leases to develop all-seasons resorts. The government would streamline this process by, according to the province’s Resort Strategy and Action Plan, identifying and eliminating “barriers to resort development, creation and expansion.” The strategy worked. Compare the province’s 10 largest ski areas today with its 10 largest in 1994:

The rise of B.C. skiing is a triumph of two sometimes contradictory forces – government and free enterprise – working in tandem for mutual benefit. The transformation of a onetime winter sports backwater into a Winter Olympic host dotted with icons such as Whistler and the Powder Highway is a remarkable case study in effective land management to the benefit of nature and people.

Alberta, right next door, has no such policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, ski area development has lagged. The two big Banff ski areas are nice. Remote Marmot Basin has modernized. But the majority of the province’s ski areas are rusty, rickety, undersized, or all three. Most are not in the mountains at all, but cluster instead around Alberta’s plains-bound cities. The predictable result: Albertans, according to the Edmonton Journal, spend “four times more money in B.C. than British Columbians do in Alberta.”

Alberta officials would like to change that. Per CBC News:

The Alberta government wants to entice private developers to propose building all-season resorts on Crown land, in an effort to boost tourism outside of summertime.

Tourism and Sport Minister Joseph Schow tabled a bill Thursday that, if passed, would create a regulator to manage applications for — and approval of — all-season resorts on public land. There are currently none on Crown land.

"There are incredible business owners and entrepreneurs in this province with some great ideas, but it is a difficult process," Schow said during an embargoed news conference Thursday morning. "We're going to make it easier."

Bill 35, the All-Season Resorts Act, would create a new regulator within the ministry, bringing environmental assessments, land use and Indigenous engagement requirements for potential resorts under one umbrella.

Schow pointed to B.C., where all-season resorts have been government-regulated for decades — and guzzling vacation dollars away from Albertans. There are 35 mountain resorts and community ski areas on B.C. public land, 13 of which host all-season resorts with rental accommodation, according to the B.C. government.

B.C.'s resorts are pumping billions of dollars into that province's economy, Schow said.

The Alberta government estimates passing Bill 35 would add $4 billion to the province's GDP within the first decade — although government officials did not explain how they calculated that figure.

Most of B.C.’s major ski areas - all but Mt. Washington Alpine - sit on crown land, underscoring the enormous impact of British Columbia’s proactive development policies:

I’ll leave the Canadians to fight each other, because my question today is this: where is America’s version of B.C.’s Resort Task Force (which created the Resort Strategy and Action Plan)? Our ski areas, large and small, are mostly on their own to navigate the tangle of local communities, environmental groups, and government agencies that can halt any sort of expansion or development for almost any reason. Approvals, almost as a rule, take longer than construction, while litigation saps time and capital that could be invested in infrastructure.

Consider Saddleback’s war with the Forest Service over a proposed 1980s expansion, per New England Ski History:

With Saddleback finally financially stable and controlling 12,000 acres of land, [owner Donald] Breen sought to tap into its vast potential in the mid 1980s. In 1984, Breen told Ski magazine, "Saddleback has the potential to be one of the largest resorts in this part of the country" and could become "the Vail of the East."

While a massive development was possible, including above treeline skiing as well as a bowl on the back side of the mountain, initial plans were made for a phased $36 million expansion "opening up the entire bowl where the ski area sits with three more lifts and numerous trails."

Working to gain approvals, Saddleback offered to donate a 200-foot easement to the National Park Service for the Appalachian Trail while retaining the ability to have skiers and equipment cross the corridor if needed. Countering the ski area's plans, the National Park Service recommended taking 3,000 acres of Saddleback's land. As a result, instead of investing in the mountain, Breen was forced to spend large sums of money to defend his property from eminent domain.

Attempting to break the impasse in the early 1990s, Saddleback offered to pare back expansion plans and sell 2,000 acres to the National Park Service. The National Park Service responded with an offer for one sixth of the amount Saddleback wanted from the property.

By the mid 1990s, Saddleback was offering to donate 300 acres of land to the National Park Service, while retaining the right to cross the Appalachian Trail with connector ski trails. The National Park Service once again refused, sticking with its eminent domain plan. Later Congressional testimony revealed that the Breen family was forced to negotiate with and give concessions to the Appalachian Trail Conference, only to have the agreements retracted by the National Park Service. In addition, the National Park Service would refuse to turn over documents relating to its involvement with other ski areas, or to put parameters of potential agreements in writing.

After having spent a decade and a half of his life trying to work with the Forest Service, Donald Breen took a step back from negotiations in 1997, handing the reins over to his daughter Kitty. The Maine Congressional Delegation was brought in to attempt to get the National Park Service to negotiate.

At Senator Olympia Snowe's urging, Saddleback offered to sell the bowl on the back side of the mountain to the Park Service in exchange for being able to develop its Horn Bowl area. The National Park Service rejected the offer, insisting the expansion was not viable, that the ski area could sustain increased skier visits on its existing footprint, and that Saddleback's undeveloped land had little financial value.

Negotiations continued into 2000, at which point Saddleback had increased its donation offer to 660 acres, while the National Park Service still wanted to take 893 acres by eminent domain. Five proposals were put on the table while the National Park Service threatened to turn the matter over to the Department of Justice for condemnation. Finally, on November 2, 2000, the National Park Service and Saddleback reached a deal in which the Breens donated 570 acres along the Appalachian Trail corridor, while selling the 600 acre back bowl for $4 million. While the deal meant Breen could move forward with his development of the resort, the long battle with the government had consumed millions of dollars and nearly two decades of his life. Now in his 70s, Breen was ready to retire. In 2001, the massive resort property was put on the market for $12 million.

This is one example of dozens I could pluck from the annals of failed ski area development. Beginning in the 1970s, a series of environmental laws and regulations (inadvertently) made it very easy to obstruct ski area development and expansion. Many of these changes were necessary as America transitioned into a post-industrial nation, but they made few concessions for concentrated, intensive rural land use. There was no balance, no agency to say, “OK, of these 10 million acres, we’re going to let someone develop 10,000 as a ski/summer resort, so long as they can prove it’s a sustainable business that will create local jobs, restrict residential and commercial development to a small footprint directly adjacent to the mountain, and mitigate environmental fallout to the greatest extent possible. They can identify the land, we’ll help make it happen, because the United States, with its ample supply of snow and mountains and ability to build almost anything almost anywhere, should have the best ski resorts in the world, and those should be built in a deliberate, thoughtful manner.”

Instead, we have a hodgepodge. In some places, various forces have figured out a way to work together: the 11 ski areas in Colorado’s White River National Forest (Aspen, Sunlight, plus everything in Eagle and Summit Counties), have been able to consistently expand and improve. But Washington State is impossible. Tahoe is impossible. Sipapu, a 200-acre peanut in New Mexico, could be one of the largest ski resorts in the United States, but a proposal to just double its size has been frozen by opposition for years.

The conflicted state of U.S. ski area development is perhaps best on display in Utah, where Deer Valley is in the midst of a 3,700-acre expansion, while community activists prevented Park City Mountain Resort, right next door, from replacing two chairlifts serving existing terrain in 2022. A gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon, which would remove the blight of the traffic-cluttered, avalanche-prone Alta/Snowbird access road, has been recast as an environmental catastrophe. An incredibly sensible series of lifts that would have connected the six Wasatch resorts in a European-style megaresort has been similarly demonized and discarded, ensuring that traffic congestion, and all the fallout that goes with it, will be perpetual.

I often poke fun of Free Market Bro, but this is a jab at fundamentalist business school morons who read Atlas Shrugged and go forth with theories that the world’s ills would be corrected should we just eliminate that meddlesome government. But I believe in free enterprise, and I believe in good government, and I think the two work best when they work together. B.C. does this. A private party can ask to expand or build a resort. The government says, “OK, you pay for it, you take care of it, you pay us taxes on your profits and lease fees for the land. Don’t get greedy. No $20 million slopeside homes. This should be nice but accessible. Now go find a way to make people want to come to Canada.”

And it’s working. Canada is well on its way to kicking America’s ass in the totality of its modern ski resort options. Are we really going to let that happen?