Skift Take
There are tradeoffs with smaller operations -- slower chairlifts, lackluster lodging -- but being able to travel back in time to what skiing was like before it was big business is a definite lure.
"Whatever happened to that simple joy?" asks the narrator of Valhalla, the latest ski film from Sweetgrass Productions. The film features a fictional ski community who eschew fast chairlifts and expensive mountain restaurants for a purer, gentler life in harmony with the mountain. It is rich in nostalgia – for a time when being in the mountains in winter was about freedom and adventure. Yet, in one sense, Valhalla is located firmly in the 21st century: it will resonate with anyone who has ever winced at the cost of a week's lift pass in a big resort, or stood in a 30-minute chairlift queue before descending a piste packed with skiers, dodging cannons making artificial snow.
Has it ever occurred to you that it doesn't have to be this way?
It occurred to the residents of Terrace, British Columbia – 1,500km north of Vancouver – who in January 2013 became the proud owners of their local hill, Shames Mountain, making it Canada's first not-for-profit ski co-operative. My Mountain Coop was formed in 2010 out of Friends of Shames, a group established to create a business model that could take ownership of the mountain (which had been for sale for a decade) and save it from otherwise certain closure. Local businesses, individuals and families bought memberships to the co-op and, th
