The economics of skiing in America

WHITE POWDER can drive many people mad. At the bottom of the Imperial chairlift in Breckenridge, a mountain resort in Colorado, at 10 o’clock in the morning on a sunny Saturday, at least 200 people are queuing to get up. The chairlift is not yet carrying people, but the crowd is patient. There is, after all, a show to watch. Up the mountain, men in red jackets are trying to set off avalanches. Explosions ring out every few minutes. Your correspondent, who was slow to arrive, joins the back of the queue as it begins to move, and a cheer goes up. By the time he gets onto a chair, the pristine powder snow below the lift has already been chopped up by a hundred tracks, and the line to get back up stretches the length of a football field.