Downhill Slide: Why the Corporate Ski Industry is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns, and the Environment
In this impassioned expose, lifelong skier Hal Clifford reveals how publicly traded corporations gained control of America’s most popular winter sport during the 1990s, and how their greed is gutting ski towns, the natural environment, and skiing itself.
Chronicling the collision between Wall Street’s demand for unceasing revenue growth and the fragile natural and social environments of small mountain communities, Clifford shows how the modern ski industry promotes its product as environmentally friendly, while at the same time creating urban-style problems for mountain villages. He suggests an alternative to this bleak picture in the return-to-the-roots movement that is now beginning to find its voice in many American ski towns, and he relates stories of creative business people who are shifting control of the ski business back to the communities that host it.
Hard-hitting and carefully researched, Downhill Slide is indispensable reading for anyone who lives in, visits, or cares about what is happening to America’s alpine communities.
Product Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
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Written in 2003, it perfectly predicts 2010
A fundamentally dishonest look at the modern ski industry
Downhill Slide will almost certainly play well among class warriors, ski town kvetches and the Chicken Little faction of the environmental movement. But if you’re looking for objective analysis and honest debate over real issues, look elsewhere.Hal Clifford questions almost every statement made by senior industry managers (backing many with snide comments), but treats pronouncements made by industry opponents – including some based on patently false assumptions – as gospel. In Clifford’s…