Utah’s Snowbird ski area normally boasts the first-rate snow in us of a. Yet, even with its new partnership with the wildly famous Ikon Pass, it’s one of the loneliest resorts, with a meager skier-per-acre tally. It has a long, snowy, and regularly-crowded driveway winding up Little Cottonwood Canyon. “The secure carrying capability of our motel some distance exceeds the wide variety of humans we can put up the street,” said Dave Amirault, Snowbird’s director of advertising. “Our visitation has been flat for years because we can’t get any greater human beings up here.”
That isn’t always a hassle specific to Snowbird. In a developing West, where cut-price passes are riding visitors and motel community populations are swelling, the automobiles, not the skiers, might be inflicting the most headaches. And Amirault has a solid, clean plan. This eases Snowbird’s access venture and draws the eye of motels. S. A.. Which can be struggling with skiers using their motors.
His new app RIDE — shorthand for Reduce Individual Driving for the Environment — offers easy, however compelling, rewards to drivers and riders who carpool. In its first month, RIDE has been used more than 1,500 times. Other resorts, including Eldora and Copper Mountain in Colorado and Lee Canyon in Nevada, have signed up to use this system next season.
