Sneak Peek of the Week
Corporate shuffling yanks two outdoor companies out of Colorado
129,773
Number of outdoor recreation employees in Colorado in 2022
The Colorado outdoor industry likes to cheer when garage-born startups get acquired by mega-corporations. It’s a sign that Colorado’s entrepreneurs are on the right track and the state’s support of outdoor innovators in the soaring industry is working.
But what about when those international conglomerates yank those businesses out of Colorado? That’s what’s happening right now as the e-bike maker QuietKat leaves Eagle for California and Boulder stalwart Backcountry Access heads for Washington as part of restructuring by corporate owners.
“We’ve been suspecting this for about 10 years,” said Bruce “Edge” Edgerly, who 30 years ago founded Backcountry Access alongside his pal Bruce “Bruno” McGowan, establishing one of the most innovative companies in the avalanche safety world. “One of the main reasons to be in the outdoor industry is to have a fun work environment with like-minded people and to be involved in developing and testing prototypes and being hands-on with products. All that is going away, so it appears my dream career is kind of starting to dissipate, which is heartbreaking but inevitable, you know.”
Bike manufacturer Niner Bikes also has left its longtime headquarters in Fort Collins to join its corporate parent in Ohio. Guerilla Gravity has shut down its Denver bike factory and closed its unique carbon manufacturing business.
Justin and Jake Roach founded QuietKat in 2012 with a plan to help hunters get deeper into the backcountry with agile but powerful electric bikes. By 2014 the brothers were selling their e-bikes to all sorts of riders, emerging as a top brand in the growing industry. In 2021 they had almost 50 employees and sales were exploding, up 145% in 2020 compared with 2019.
Vista Outdoor, a Minnesota-based conglomerate that owns diverse outdoor brands like CamelBak, Bell, Giro, Simms, Remington and Camp Chef, acquired QuietKat in 2021 in an undisclosed deal. The company recently announced plans to create a standalone public company — Revelyst — with 15 of its biking and hunting brands. The restructuring moves brands like CamelBak, Bell, Giro and QuietKat into the headquarters of Fox Racing in Irvine, California, and warehouse in Kansas City, while other brands shift to Bozeman, Montana, and San Diego.
“It was a quick move,” said Jake Roach, whose last day with QuietKat was April 1.
Cory and Jamie Finney’s Greater Colorado Venture Fund has invested $44.5 million in 37 rural Colorado startup companies, helping to support entrepreneurs beyond the Front Range, including QuietKat.
The Finneys are quick to make sure to not blend the outdoor industry, Colorado rural startups in the outdoor industry and the overall ecosystem supporting rural entrepreneurs in the state.
The outdoor industry is seeing challenges as it emerges from the banner years of the pandemic. Outdoors businesses across the country are tightening budgets and consolidating operations and “some of our rural Colorado outdoor success stories are caught up in this current,” Cory Finney said.
“Sure, they may have had more say of where operations are when they were private, but the reality is that most outdoor companies right now are focused on survival,” he said.
But the rural Colorado entrepreneurial landscape is vibrant, Finney said.
“That includes new starts in the outdoor industry. We are still seeing businesses being created at a consistent if not increased pace,” Finney said, noting that the Greater Colorado Venture Fund anticipates investments in another 15 to 20 businesses in the next few years. “The opportunity set remains strong. It is natural for companies to go through life cycles, but the constant is that the founders have chosen rural Colorado as home and will start their next venture in their community.”
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In Their Words
American chairlift czar completes 25-year mission to visit all 750 ski areas in the U.S. and Canada
2,976
Number of chairlifts at 750 North American ski areas Peter Landsman has photographed and documented for his database at LiftBlog.com
Sometime in the next month, Peter Landsman will travel for nearly 24 hours to reach Moose Mountain, a single-lift ski area outside Dawson City in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
The tiny Moose Mountain, which is typically staffed by volunteers and closes when temperatures dip to around 20-below, will mark the end of Landsman’s quarter-century quest to visit every chairlift in North America. He will snap photos of the dangling T-bar chairlift and then pretty quickly begin his trip back home to Jackson, Wyoming.
“Every single lift is custom made and unique,” he says. “They each represent their own place and they have different sounds and different looks and each is just so cool in their own right.”
Landsman’s Liftblog.com database now includes photos and detailed history of all the chairlifts, T-bars, platter and surface lifts at 750 resorts in the U.S. and Canada. This season he scoured the most remote corners of Canada as well as visiting 61 of the 62 new chairlifts installed in the U.S. in the past year.
In 2022, the 34-year-old lift supervisor at Jackson Hole ski area in Wyoming concluded visits to all 500 U.S. resorts and turned his attention to about 250 ski hills in Canada.
Colorado Sun: So North America is done. Are you off to Europe next winter?
Peter Landsman: I think going to every lift in Europe would be a multi-lifetime endeavor. I think I’m going to stick with North America for the Lift Blog database. There are a lot of new lifts being built, and that will keep me busy. There were 62 last year and maybe 55 this year. It’s a decline but still a lot compared to pre-COVID. And there are new lifts being built for things other than skiing. There’s a new gondola going in this summer at Legoland in New York. It’s going to be nice to visit a chairlift without my winter gear. Then, I think I might take a breather. I was on an airplane this winter for 22 weeks in a row while working full-time at Jackson Hole. I have been traveling nonstop for five years and I could use a little bit of a break.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
Breaking Trail
Big plans for beginner skiers at Breckenridge, Winter Park
Two of Colorado’s busiest ski areas — Breckenridge and Winter Park — are seeking Forest Service approval for new lifts and upgrades to improve beginner terrain and move more people out of base villages by the 2025-26 ski season.
Winter Park is going big on upgrades for beginners with a sweeping overhaul of the ski area’s Discovery Park learning area.
The biggest plan is to replace the 1993 Gemini Express high-speed quad with a 10-passenger gondola that will unload at a new 16,000-square-foot ski school lodge next to three new conveyor-belt surface lifts accessing learning terrain. (That new gondola is a leg in a larger gondola plan to eventually connect the ski area with downtown Winter Park, outlined in the resort’s 2022 Master Development Plan.)
Winter Park is also seeking Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forest approval to replace the Endeavor fixed-grip triple with a high-speed quad and upgrade Discovery fixed-grip double with a fixed-grip quad as beginners progress to chairlift-accessed skiing.
The city of Denver-owned ski area managed by Alterra Mountain Co. also wants to install a new six-pack chairlift below the Olympia Express to the top of Cooper Creek summit and remove the Looking Glass, a double installed in 1966 that ranks as one of the oldest chairlifts in the state. The resort plans to build five new beginner-friendly trails off the new Cooper Creek chair.
The resort also hopes to install more than six miles of new or upgraded lines on the Winter Park side to increase snowmaking by 57 acres and install almost six miles of new or upgraded lines on the Mary Jane side to increase snowmaking by 77 acres.
At the top of the Wild Spur lift on Vasquez Ridge, Winter Park wants to replace the Sundance Chili Hut with a 10,000-square-foot lodge with a sit-down eatery and a 3,000-square-foot deck.
Details of the plans for the 2025-26 season are at the Forest Service’s project site and the agency is seeking public comment through June 15.
Breckenridge ski area — the most trafficked in the country — is asking White River National Forest — the busiest national forest in the country — for approval to build a new gondola and a six-pack chairlift on Peak 9. The upgrades, reads the resort’s application, would “enhance the recreational experience for Breckenridge ski resort’s large population of beginner and low-intermediate skiers.”
“Guest expectations are quickly evolving in the ski resort industry, and for Breckenridge ski resort to remain competitive it must maintain a diverse, interesting, and well-connected trail system that caters to guests of all ability levels,” reads the scoping letter from the Forest Service seeking public comment.
The new two-stage gondola would access the Beaver Run condo complex and the Peak 9 Maggie base area, which the resort’s application says accommodates 43% of all Breckenridge skiers. The new gondola would replace the existing A-Chair — installed in 1975 — and offer easier access to beginner terrain. Breckenridge also hopes to replace the existing C-Chair, built in 1972, with a new high-speed six pack. The resort plans to add new conveyor lifts to an upgraded Frontier Learning Area.
The Breckenridge ski area upgrade plan is available at the White River forest’s project website and the agency is seeking public comment through June 13.
A decline in skier deaths at Colorado resorts for 2023-24
14
Number of people who died at Colorado ski areas in 2023-24
Six people died after colliding with trees at Colorado ski areas so far in the 2023-24 ski season. Six others died from medical issues, including four visitors from out-of-state. Ten of the fatalities were male. A survey of Colorado’s high country coroners found that at least 14 people, ages 14 to 78, died on Colorado’s ski slopes during the 2023-24 ski season.
Ski areas do not release cumulative details or reports about deaths at resorts. Many resorts only reveal a fatality when asked, offering emailed statements that “extend our deepest sympathy.”
The Colorado Sun annually surveys 16 county coroners across the state to compile a list of skier deaths at resorts each season.
Resorts also do not discuss or detail injuries at ski areas, even though emergency rooms in resort communities treat thousands of injured skiers and snowboarders every season.
Colorado coroners reported at least 17 deaths at ski resorts in the 2022-23 ski season, an increase over previous seasons but below the record of 22 fatalities in the low-snow season of 2011-12. The 2022-23 season in Colorado included two teenagers killed while sledding in the closed halfpipe at Copper Mountain, four medical issues and five collisions with trees. The 2022-23 season was the busiest ever for Colorado ski resorts, with 14.8 million visits. The U.S. ski resort industry also logged a record number of visits — 64.7 million — in the 2022-23 season.
The National Ski Areas Association reported 46 deaths at U.S. ski areas in 2022-23, which included 42 males, 37 skiers and 19 fatal accidents on intermediate runs. The national association does not count fatalities involving medical events in its annual reporting of resort deaths.
The National Ski Areas Association fatal incident rate — based on a 10-season average — is 0.74 deaths for every 1 million skier visits. In Colorado that would equate to 11 deaths in seasons with 15 million skiers visits, but again, that national rate does not include medical events.
Colorado Ski Country, the trade group that represents 20 of the state’s 30 ski areas, counted only three deaths at its member resorts in 2023-24. The group’s member resorts do not include any Vail Resorts ski areas — like Breckenridge, Keystone and Vail, three of the busiest ski areas in the country, that accounted for seven ski area deaths in 2023-24.
Colorado Ski Country, like the National Ski Areas Association, only counts trauma-related deaths and does not include medical events like heart attacks. The trade group does not comment on skier deaths.
>> Click over to The Sun on Monday to read this story
— j
Corrections & Clarifications
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