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The 2.3-kilowattt Aspen Highlands Solar Array provides enough energy annually to run an average home for half a year. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has earned its sustainability stripes by protecting fragile
wildlife habitats. Sun Peaks Resort's Sunburst Chairlift is run, like all of its lifts, on hydroelectric power. Jiminy Peak is both environmentally and family friendly, meeting a full third of its annual electricity needs with its own wind turbine, called Zephyr, and offers an extensive children's program, with ski lessons for kids ages three and up. Sundance Resort is surrounded by Robert Redford's 6,000-acre Sundance preserve, and runs all its trail groomers on biodiesel. |
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Until September 2009, the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia was home to the highest ski run in the world. At 17,388 feet, the “resort”—which featured a ramshackle base serving chicha cochabambina, an alcohol made from corn, and a single rope tow jerry-rigged to a car engine—was a far cry from the heated gondolas and ex pansive lodges to which first-world skiers are accustomed. In spite of its remoteness and elevation, however, scientists had predicted that the glacier would last only until 2015—at which time, as a result of global warming, it would melt.
The scientists were wrong. The Chacaltaya glacier disappeared this past September, six years ahead of schedule. According to SKI magazine, climate change has caused glacial melting rates to triple in the past ten years.
To ride the lift at Chacaltaya cost six dollars a day. But in the United States, skiing is a six-billion-dollar-a-year business, counting lift tickets, food and drink, and lodging. But, the lesson learned from Chacaltaya was priceless and just one reason that ski resorts are adopting sustainable business practices. No snow, after all, means no business. As a result, over the past decade winter resorts from California to Vermont have implemented ecofriendly measures like recycling, energy reduction, erecting LEED–certified buildings, and protecting fragile habitats. But which changes have the most impact? In the green spirit of the Olympic Winter Games being adopted by our neighbors to the north as they prepare for Vancouver, 2010, RL Magazine did some digging to uncover the most ecofriendly options within our own country for your winter travels. The following resorts have gone beyond mere greenwashing to make meaningful changes to the way they operate.
Aspen/Snowmass was the first resort in the United States to earn the rigorous environmental ISO 14001 certification (in 2004). This cold-weather Colorado mecca has racked up five Golden Eagle Awards for overall environmental excellence from the National Ski Areas Association, as well as a top ranking in environmental factors by the Ski Area Citizens' Coalition.
A key component of the Aspen's environmental initiatives is energy. “The idea that environmentalism means freezing in the dark is kind of mythological,” says Auden Schendler, director of sustainability for the megaresort, which saw 1.3 million skiers last season. “If I can provide a hot shower and a cold beer, people don't care” where the energy comes from, he says, citing a golf clubhouse that is heated and cooled geothermally with water from a local pond. The company draws energy from several solar power grids on its grounds and in nearby Carbondale, Colorado, and has offset its electricity use by buying renewable wind-power credits.
Because ski resorts gobble up energy by making snow and heating public areas, Aspen's energy focus is critical, says Geoffrey Heal, professor of business at Columbia University and director of the nonprofit environmental advocacy and research group Union of Concerned Scientists. Although drawing on renewable resources for power is best, he says, purchasing renewable energy credits “means that someone somewhere is cutting back emissions.”
Aspen is also one of the few resorts actively lobbying for green policy. Schendler notes that the company's CEO, Mike Kaplan, has made two environmental lobbying trips to Washington this year. “This is what we need to be doing,” says Schendler.
The only other U.S. ski area with the ISO 14001 designation, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, offsets all of its electricity usage by buying renewable energy credits—approximately nine million kilowatt-hours per year. Since June 2007, the program has resulted in a 37.6-million-pound reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, according to environmental coordinator Jon Bishop.
Bishop says the resort, which welcomes 400,000 visitors annually, has focused on “gigantic baby steps” that add up to major differences—for instance, as old lightbulbs have burned out, they've been replaced by energy-efficient models. The resort has also had a park-and-ride lot built between the town of Jackson and the base area, which has reduced by 30 percent the miles traveled per skier visit, and whenever possible it partners with businesses that maintain similar environmental commitments.
Like Aspen, Jackson Hole is looking into building a wind turbine on its property, and all of its trail groomers run on biodiesel. Bishop, though, is especially proud of the free bus pass the resort offers to all guests and employees (almost all of whom make use of public transportation to get to work). That “takes a considerable amount of traffic off the highway,” he says.
Sun Peaks Resort. This British Columbia destination earned the coveted ISO 14001 designation before Aspen, back in April 2004, making it the first resort in North America to do so. It's adopted a number of impressive initiatives that save energy and that use clean energy, including a snowmaking system that relies on gravity rather than electric pumps to move water into snow machines. Sun Peaks also runs all of its lifts on hydroelectricity and is considering a system that uses melted snow to power its largest ski lift.
Many of the resorts making strides environmentally have enormous budgets, scores of trails, and see hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. But one of the nation's leaders is Jiminy Peak in Hancock, Massachusetts, which features a modest forty-four runs. In 2008 the resort, located in the Berkshires, opened the Zephyr, an on-site wind turbine that produces a third of the resort's annual electricity. As a result, last year Jiminy Peak earned the Golden Eagle Award for overall environmental excellence from the National Ski Areas Association.
In some respects, Sundance Resort in Utah is in a distinct category, because it operates so closely with Sundance Preserve, the 6,000-acre nonprofit conservation area surrounding it. Like Aspen and Jackson Hole, Sundance runs all of its trail groomers on biodiesel. It purchases all of its electricity through carbon-neutral means and recycles its own glass—not an easy feat in Utah County, where no glass-recycling facilities exist. At Sundance, glass artisans are kept on staff for eight months of the year. “We send our glass to them, and they smash it up and melt it down” into functional glassware used in and around the resort, explains Robbie Preece, who manages the preserve's nature center.
From 2006 until this past September, Vail Resorts offset all of its electricity with wind-power credits, making it the largest purchaser of wind power in the nation. But water is now the resort's priority. “Sixty-five percent of the nation's water comes through the national forests,” says CEO Rob Katz. “In Colorado that number is closer to 85 percent. There is nothing that could be more significant for us than improving water and the environment and doing so in our home state.” The resort is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service to replant and restore Pike National Forest, where more than 130,000 acres burned during a wildfire in 2002 (caused by arson).
As impressive as these initiatives are, “If people don't get into the forests and out of the city,” says Katz, “their willingness to support protection of the outdoors is low.” To raise awareness on climate change, adds Heal, “you need to focus on things that people can touch, feel, and see.” The barren Chacaltaya glacier is testament to that.
Rachel Somerstein in a New York–based editor and writer who covers topics ranging from art and politics to urban planning for ARTnews, ART + AUCTION, McSweeney's, PBS, n+1, and Next American City.
Photography credits:
- Daniel Bayer
- Tristan Greszko/JHMR
- Sun Peaks Resort/Adam Stein
- Rob Bossi/Courtesy Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort
- Adam Brown
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