On Top of The Mountain
With deep roots in the valley, Chris Jarnot now heads Vail operations
When the Jarnot family first pulled up in front of their new home in the now-abandoned mining town of Gilman in the mid-1970s, it was a cold and rainy day. Cathie Jarnot took one look at the weathered, three-bedroom, clapboard house and cried.
Thirty-four years later, Cathie’s son, Chris, stepped up to a podium in Vail’s Donovan Pavilion, and his emotions upon returning to the Vail Valley after a couple of years of work-imposed exile were clearly at the opposite end of the spectrum.
He began his introductory remarks to an open house for Vail residents by giving eternal thanks to his father, Bob, for uprooting his then-fledgling family from the suburbs of Detroit and relocating to Gilman and the Vail Valley. Gilman still stands between the towns of Minturn and Red Cliff, off the backside of Vail Mountain, but it’s now fenced off and an EPA Superfund Cleanup site (although the Ginn Company is planning to develop it as a year-round resort).
Back when the Jarnots first moved to the town it was low-cost housing for the resort area’s employees such as firemen, police and teachers. And Bob Jarnot had just taken a job as a business and typing teacher at nearby Battle Mountain High School, then in Minturn.
Chris was six when his family moved west. Now 41, he is moving his young family back to the valley he’s called home for the vast majority of his life, and as he stood to address Vail residents at Donovan Pavilion, it was as senior vice president of Vail Resorts and the new chief operating officer of Vail Mountain. He was clearly happy to be back after being based out of the company’s corporate headquarters in Broomfield (on the outskirts of Denver) the last couple of years.
Prior to news of the Broomfield move, Jarnot, wife Shelly and their three children were about to start construction on a house in the Vail Valley. Then, in January 2006, Vail Resorts’ CEO Adam Aron announced he was stepping down. Incoming CEO Rob Katz, a former senior partner at New York investment firm Apollo Advisors, promptly moved the company’s headquarters to Broomfield.
“First of all, it was a big surprise when it happened, but I’m really glad to have made the move with the company down (to Broomfield),” Jarnot says. “It’s been a great experience. From a personal level, it’s been a great way to remind us of all the things we love about the valley. Also, there are things you realize when get out of the valley that we could be doing better.”
Bob Jarnot isn’t surprised to hear his son talk that way. He knows how much the Vail Valley is in Chris’s blood. In fact, when it came time for college, the elder Jarnot fully expected Chris to attend business school in New York or some other financial hub. Instead, Chris opted to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder in order to stay closer to the mountains.
“Being away from here and being in a city, the more he realized what he had left behind,” says Bob Jarnot, who now lives with Cathie near Sweetwater in the ranchlands on the western end of the Eagle County. “I think Chris was a mountain boy at heart, whether or not he knew it.”
As a freshman at the CU in the mid-1980s, Chris helped unload buses of eager skiers at Beaver Creek over his holiday break. In May 1989, poised to graduate from the university’s tourism management program, he needed only an internship to finish up his course work. Returning to Vail, he talked his way into an unpaid summer stint in the marketing department, and then proceeded to work his way up to senior vice president of sales and marketing for Vail Resorts.
Jarnot assumed his new position in a management shakeup January 8, 2008 that saw former Vail chief operating officer and the president of the company’s mountain division, Bill Jensen, leave to become CEO of ski industry rival Intrawest. In Colorado, Intrawest owns Copper Mountain Resort, and Steamboat and also manages Winter Park Resort. The company’s flagship is Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia.
Jarnot says his experience while based in Broomfield and Colorado’s Front Range has given him a valuable perspective about Denver-area day skiers who battle increasing traffic on Interstate 70 and decreasing parking once they reach the resorts. He suggests every ski executive needs to appreciate the point of view of the customer, which is something he takes pride in.
“I’ve always considered myself to be an advocate for the customer in my marketing and sales role, so this is continuing that focus, but on the actual guest experience,” 
Jarnot explains. “So many ski resort executives have their skis and gear stored at the edge of the snow and lose track of how difficult it is for the average guest to get here — whether they’re driving up and parking in a parking lot or staying in a condo and getting to the slopes through the village.”
Part of the challenge, Jarnot says, involves providing enough parking, access and pedestrian flow during Vail’s ongoing billion-dollar-plus redevelopment. He lauds the completion of such projects as Arrabelle at Vail Square in Lionshead (a new retail, residential, hotel project) and new skier services at the base of the Vista Bahn chairlift in Vail Village.
“Thinking of what was in Lionshead three years ago and what’s there now, it’s unbelievably different and better,” Jarnot notes. “And there’s light at the end of the tunnel (as far as construction is concerned). When we get there it’s going to be absolutely mind-blowingly cool to have the village we’ll have and the mountain we’ll have.”
As for the mountain, Jarnot says new high-speed quads last season (Chairs 10 and 14) have already improved skier flow, and a new high-speed quad to replace Chair 5 in Sun Down Bowl, slated for the 2009-10 season, will continue that trend.
“I know there is still an argument a new Chair 5 will add too much traffic and the Back Bowls snow will get tracked up that much sooner, but I don’t think that’s legitimate,” Jarnot says. “The time has long since come. And most of the snow is tracked up by mid morning anyway. The wait at the bottom of Chair 5 is not an experience we’re going to continue to put our guests through.”
Rob Katz says that intimate knowledge of how Vail skis made Jarnot the perfect choice to head up mountain operations. “It would be hard to find anyone more knowledgeable about everything that Vail stands for than Chris,” Katz notes. “He has spent a lifetime growing up, recreating and working around Vail Mountain and has a deep understanding of what is so special about the resort.”
The Jarnots persevered those first couple of years in Gilman, where the houses that still dot the steep hillside were affordable but not necessarily well-constructed. Chris recalls ice building up in the corner of his younger sister Katie’s room and his own bedspread freezing to the wall.
But Gilman gave Bob and Cathie time to save up and build one of the first homes in Lake Creek Meadows southwest of Edwards. Chris attended Eagle Valley High School (where his father didn’t teach) and was co-valedictorian of his 1985 graduating class. Katie, two years younger than Chris, got a variance to attend Battle Mountain High School (then in Minturn and where Bob Jarnot did teach) because she believed it had a stronger drama program. Now she’s an assistant principal at a middle school in Connecticut, following in her father’s educational footsteps.
Cathie Jarnot, meanwhile, worked at CMI, a small manufacturing plant that produced speed guns in Eagle-Vail until owner and inventor Jack Fritzlen died and his wife Marty (now Marty Head) sold the company. Cathie then worked for the Town of Vail for 11 years in human resources before moving on to the Westin Resort (now Cascade Hotel).
Today Chris and Shelly, who works for East West Resorts, have three young children: Cameron, 8; Miles; 5, and Elliott, 3. Bob Jarnot is elated to have them all returning to the Vail Valley this summer. “We’ll get to baby-sit again,” he says. “You can’t imagine how great that will be.”
David O. Williams is a freelance writer and founder of realvail.com. His work has appeared in a number of national and regional publications. Dave, wife Kristen and their three children live in Vail.
