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Echo Mountain ski area bought to be converted into training facility
Read more: Echo Mountain ski area bought to be converted into training facility - The Denver Post http://www.denverpos...o#ixzz24xGeDjV4
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Nora Pykkonen was ready to move her family to Vail to keep her kids' passion for ski racing aflame.
"Kids really need to spend a lot of time on snow to become very good skiers and we were spending most of our time in the car," said the mother of four.
But instead of moving, Pykkonen purchased the 226-acre Echo Mountain ski area and is converting the Clear Creek County hill into a ski-racing training facility focusing on school-aged racers. The sale price was not disclosed in the deal that closed Tuesday.
"This all started with asking how do you keep your kids in the great schools we have in the Front Range and still keep your kids in ski racing?" said the co-founder of Slalom Consulting, a management consulting firm with 1,300 employees and more recently founder of the Front Range Ski Club.
The club will call Echo home, with a roster of top-tier ski coaches, including World Cup skiers Sarah Schleper-Gaxiola, Petter Brenna, Patrik Järbyn and Mike Farny.
Echo will open in November.
Pykkonen plans to upgrade the resort with ski-race training in mind. Her team will set up the mountain as a gym, with stations designed for honing skills like jump starts and sliding. Two surface lifts will rush racers back to the top more speedily than the chairlift. Racers will finish each run in a video tent, reviewing their form before grabbing another lap.
Echo was revived by entrepreneur Jerry Pettit, who pumped more than $5 million into the ski hill since acquiring the dormant Squaw Pass ski area in 2002 for $700,000. Pettit grew skier visits from 12,000 in Echo's inaugural 2005-06 season to more than 32,000 last year. Originally designed and marketed as a terrain park for younger skiers and snowboarders, Echo a few years ago added lights and ski racing. It soon became a training hotbed not just for Denver-area racers but mountain ski racing clubs weary of fighting for training time on limited race terrain in the hills.
"I think this will be a very interesting opportunity for them and hopefully in a few years we will hear about an Olympic skier that came out of Echo," Pettit said. "Wouldn't that be something?"
Sheldon Good & Co. handled the auction sale.
Pykkonen plans to invest $5 million in coming seasons. She envisions developing beyond the area's 80 acres of developed ski terrain, delivering 1,500 vertical feet of skiing. Her team plans to build a Super G course, a mogul lane and a new restaurant. They will add snowmaking guns, create homework and tutoring stations and develop a shuttle system for students across the metro area.
Ski clubs with adult skiers will have access to Echo Mountain terrain on a rental basis.
Echo could be the country's only ski area dedicated solely to alpine race training.
"The coaches have been working 15 to 20 hours a day on the programs," Pykkonen said. "This is one of the biggest things to ever come to alpine racing in Colorado."
Not sure that will make enough revenue to keep the area from loosing money, i guess we'll see... wish i would have skied there now that i might not be able to for the foreseeable future
This post has been edited by trooper1556: 29 August 2012 - 09:23 AM
