The crowds jamming the state’s busiest ski resorts the past few seasons have felt overwhelming, amplified by internet photos of long lift lines and communities overflowing with cars.
But is it too crowded? Hard to say. Resorts don’t share visitor numbers. And ski area operators never share the math that helps them plan for capacity.
That math could be made public following a district court ruling last week in Park City, Utah. The decision was a blow for Vail Resorts. The continent’s largest ski resort operator was appealing a Park City planning commission decision to reject two lift upgrades at its Park City Mountain Resort due to the blurry capacity math surrounding how the speedier chairlifts would impact parking.
“This is really about ski towns everywhere uniting to raise awareness about capacity,” said Angela Moschetta, one of four Park City residents who in 2021 urged the town’s planning commissioners to more closely scrutinize the impacts of the new chairlifts. “This is about getting resorts to show a bit more respect for their communities. We have to earn that respect and maybe this is how we can send the message that, ‘Hey, you guys have got to be better partners.’”
The Park City decision revolves around a resort planning metric called Comfortable Carrying Capacity — or CCC. CCC is the number of guests at a ski area when all resort functions are balanced. It’s not a maximum capacity or a cap, but the daily number of guests that a resort can comfortably handle for most of the season. It’s the number of skiers at a resort where everyone is having a good time. That number is usually somewhere between the number of skiers counted on a resort’s fifth busiest day and the 10th.
CCC is measured using chairlift capacity — the vertical feet gained plus the number of skiers the lift can ferry uphill in an hour – combined with the number of runs and the vertical rise of those runs. CCC also factors in the amount of time skiers spend in line, in the lodge and on the lift as well as the time they spend actually carving snow.
It’s a complicated and nuanced formula. But it’s foundational. The CCC anchors all design plans for every corner of a ski area, from chairlifts and ski runs to eateries and parking lots. And the actual algorithm behind determining the CCC of a ski area is a secret. Resorts say that secret formula is proprietary.
Resort operators hide a lot of information behind that proprietary curtain. They argue skier traffic numbers are protected. And they say their annual lease payments paid to federal land managers should not be released. And they certainly never talk about injuries or deaths at ski areas.
For almost 50 years, CCC has been the most critical metric for all ski area growth. The measurement was created in the mid-1960s by Joe Cushing a pioneering ski area planner at Sno-Engineering Inc., the predecessor for the influential SE Group planning outfit that guides most every major resort expansion project today.
All resort master development plans approved by the Forest Service rely on the CCC. Most of those plans, almost all of them written by the SE Group, note that “it is common” for peak days at resorts to reach 25% to 30% beyond the CCC.
“However, from a planning perspective, it is not recommended to consistently exceed the CCC due to the regulating decrease in the quality of the recreational experience, and thus the resort’s market appeal,” reads most every ski area’s master development plan written by the SE Group.
And there’s the rub. After two seasons of record-setting traffic at U.S.. ski areas — 61 million in 2021-22 and 64.7 million in 2022-23 — including back-to-back record visitation for Colorado hills, Americans are spending more time skiing than ever before. Resorts have never spent more on faster, larger chairlifts, with most of the $812.4 million spent by U.S. ski areas last season going toward 63 new chairlifts and 86 upgraded lifts. And Alterra Mountain Co. and Vail Resorts are selling many millions of season passes, enabling a golden age for the ski resort industry.
All this translates into capacity issues at ski areas. There is a limited supply of ski runs and a surging demand.
“It is possible to operate with an imbalance and exceed your capacity but you do that while walking a fine line and affecting your guest experience,” said Claire Humber, the director of resort planning and an owner at the SE Group.
At the National Ski Areas Association national convention in Nashville last year — where resorts celebrated a short-lived record 61 million visits to U.S. resorts in 2021-22 — Humber led a panel discussion dubbed “Space Isn’t The Problem: Modern Tools and Solutions for Managing Capacity.”
The resort bosses on the panel – including Arapahoe Basin chief Al Henceroth – all said they pore over skier traffic data to help manage crowds. But they didn’t share that data. The panelists outlined several innovations to manage demand, including variable, or demand, pricing: like charging $250 for a Saturday lift ticket and $75 for a Wednesday ticket. Some resorts, like Arapahoe Basin, limit pass sales and sell weekday season passes. Many resorts, including all 37 Vail Resorts hills, promise to cut off day ticket sales when traffic peaks. Many resorts are charging or requiring reservations for parking and offering incentives to skiers who carpool.
But resorts don’t share the algorithms behind their complicated crowding calculus. The Park City court decision could shine a light in the shadows where international conglomerates with small-town operations drive one of the West’s most vibrant tourism industries.
The decision by Utah’s Third District Court Judge Richard Mrazik that affirmed the planning commission’s ability to scrutinize CCC math could open doors for mountain community leaders seeking more details on ski area traffic as a condition of approving new chairlifts, parking lots and lodges.
As increasing tourist numbers, rising housing costs and a shortage of workers continue to pressure mountain communities across the West, the disclosure of CCC formulas could offer communities a more thorough understanding of how to better manage traffic, Moschetta said.
“Add in the proliferation of mega passes and … all these things come together and confirm that we absolutely have a capacity problem and what we need to do is hold our resort operators accountable to master development plan agreements,” she said. “Maybe we need to negotiate new CCCs? Let’s do that and hold operators accountable to daily capacity numbers. This is not about chairlifts and it’s not about some NIMBY assholes. It’s about having all the information we can gather to better manage impacts in mountain towns.”
Comfortable Carrying Capacity numbers in Colorado
Colorado ski resorts have been adjusting their CCCs upward with improved chairlifts and new terrain. Here are some CCC details gleaned from ski area master development plans approved by the Forest Service, including the White River National Forest, where more than 19 million annual visits to 11 major ski areas drives its ranking as the most trafficked national forest in the country.
- Arapahoe Basin’s longtime CCC was 3,780 skiers, but recent new terrain additions and lift upgrades have upped the ski area’s CCC by 9% to 4,120 skiers.
- Aspen Mountain’s new 153-acre Hero’s expansion — as well as upgrades to chairlifts, grading, improved snowmaking and restaurant renovations — bumped the mountain’s CCC to 4,610 skiers, up from 4,290.
- Beaver Creek has a CCC of 18,560 skiers but the ski area has a so-called “manage to threshold” of 11,000 skiers, which means the resort begins restricting access when it reaches that level.
- Breckenridge ski area, which is among the busiest ski areas in the country, has a CCC of 17,790 but the 2,908-acre resort is planning upgrades to push that capacity to 20,190 skiers.
- Copper Mountain has outlined upgrades to push its CCC to 15,630 skiers, up from 11,870.
- Snowmass ski area expanded terrain, improved chairlifts and upgraded snowmaking and on-mountain lodges to increase its CCC 18% in 2022, to 14,820 skiers, up from 12,500.
- Steamboat ski area’s $200 million in underway improvements have increased the CCC 25% to 16,310 skiers, up from 13,050.
- Vail ski area, which joins Breckenridge as the top two busiest ski hills in Colorado, has a CCC of 23,160 skiers but the ski area has an agreement with the town of Vail and the Forest Service to trigger restrictions when visits exceed 19,900 a day. Representatives from Vail say the resort has not hit that 19,900-skier mark in the last several seasons.
- Winter Park ski area’s CCC is 15,190 skiers, but the Denver-owned, Alterra-operated resort’s most recent master development plan proposes several new lifts and 358 acres of new ski terrain that would bump the 3,081-acre ski hill’s CCC to 20,735 skiers.