Valley Vibes
Best way to get through a blizzard roadblock
Speaking of snow (and all the love), Ryan and Trista Sutter, of The Bachelorette TV show fame in 2003, had their second baby, Blakesley Grace Sutter, April 3 at the Vail Valley Medical Center.
Now with a brand new baby girl to go with their nearly 2-year-old son, Maxwell Alston Sutter, the Avon couple announced they’re done having kids. Good thing, because they probably couldn’t take too much more drama.
Blakesley apparently didn’t get the weather report about yet another in a long string of spring snowstorms that hit the valley in April.
The highway was shut down, and the Sutters had to talk the cops into letting them through Dowd Junction to the hospital in Vail.
It probably helped that Dad’s a Vail firefighter.
Best way to “beat the Street”
Bury it under snow. Which is exactly what Vail did again this past ski season, accumulating 437 inches of snowfall (87 more than the annual 350 average).
Lots of snow helped the resort keep skier-day losses at a minimum in the face of a global economic meltdown that left a lot of Wall Street types — the usual bread and butter for Vail Resorts, especially on the real estate front — applying for jobs as lift ops instead of booking pricey ski vacations.
VR’s five mountains — Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Heavenly (California), Keystone and Vail — were only off only about 6.2 percent for the season, thanks mostly to the unlimited, six-mountain Epic Pass (all five areas plus Arapahoe Basin), which was re-upped for next season at the bargain-basement price of $579.
There was very little discussion last season about the crowded slopes and parking snarls that would result from the Epic Pass — an actual concern when it was first introduced in the spring of ’08 — and instead, the community marketing types rallied to entice more Front Range skiers with the “Vail All the Love” campaign.
Best ex-jock politician
From Bill Bradley to Steve Largent, America has a storied tradition of former standout college and professional athletes transitioning into a life of politics after retiring from the court or the field.
Jack Kemp, who for years owned a home in Vail and loved to ski here and supported numerous local philanthropic causes, may top most people’s lists of accomplished athletes who went on to make a mark in a far more critical arena.
Kemp died of cancer in early May at his home in Maryland, but the former Buffalo Bills star will long be remembered in Vail for how much he gave to the community (serving on the board of the Vail Valley Foundation) and the mark he made on the American political landscape as a moderate Republican who tenaciously fought for social justice.
The so-called “bleeding-heart conservative,” who served many years in Congress and later ran for both the presidency and vice presidency, was a relentless champion of low taxes and supply-side economics. Kemp is largely regarded as the architect of President Ronald Reagan’s economic philosophy.
And, of course, Vail’s most famous political retiree, the late President Gerald Ford, also was a standout football player — in his case at the University of Michigan.
Best way to break the Vail-Beaver Creek Magazine cover curse
OK, such a curse actually does not exist, but we were beginning to wonder after putting former Ski Club Vail standout Lindsey Vonn on our holiday cover.
Before the magazine even hit the racks in November, Vonn (formerly Kildow) had to make a quick trip to the Vail Valley Medical Center to have her knee checked out after crashing during a training run at Copper Mountain.
The defending overall World Cup champion shook off the injury and went on to win a second overall title — much to our relief — although she did get a nasty cut on her thumb from holding a broken champagne bottle after winning a World Championship gold medal in March.
After passing Tamara McKinney as the all-time winningest American woman ski racer this past season, all Vonn needs now is a couple Olympic gold medals to complete an already amazing career. She’ll likely get those at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
Best way to end the season with a bang
For free. As part of the “Vail All the Love” marketing campaign to put skiers on the slopes and heads in beds last season, the annual Spring Back to Vail festival for the first time featured free headliner concerts with the likes of Chris Isaak and O.A.R (Of a Revolution).
The new tradition will continue when next ski season kicks off with the annual Snow Daze festival and more free shows featuring big-name bands.
Earlier in April (sometimes we wonder why so many people come in December), the unsung Vail Film Festival featured its usual stellar lineup. Our favorite? Best of Fest winner Weather Girl, featuring Mark Harmon, Ryan Devlin, Tricia O’Kelley and Patrick Adams.
The cast, sans Harmon, took to the stage of the old Cascade theater with beers in hand and chatted up the audience on the merits of the low-budget, indy film.
Where else but Vail, where the snow was piled high, the sun was shining and the skiing was epic, can you find such a dose of concurrent culture while soaking up the Rocky Mountain vibe?
OK, maybe Aspen and Telluride. But our mountain is better.
Worst way to escape your troubles
Plagued by allegations and his subsequent admission of steroid use, New York Yankees superstar third baseman Alex Rodriguez needed a vacation, so he came to Vail in March.
Nothing unusual there. A lot of people escape to ski towns to forget about the rat race back home, if only for a week or two. But A-Rod wasn’t skiing.
The Bronx Bomber was in town to have his bum hip fixed by arguably the best in the business.
The Steadman Hawkins Clinic’s top hip doc, Marc Philippon, who has repaired the hips of golfers like Greg Norman, hockey players like Mario Lemieux and Olympians like Michelle Kwan, performed his magic on Rodriguez, who returned to action May 10 with a homerun in his first at-bat back in the Majors.
Worst way to make a good call
While Vail Resorts in no way referenced the tragic death of Natasha Richardson when the ski company in April announced a company-wide mandatory helmet policy, the ski accident at Mont Tremblant that claimed the Tony Award-winning actress’s life in March had to have been on the minds of Vail’s top executives.
Richardson, the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and wife of actor Liam Neeson, crashed and hit her head while skiing at the Canadian resort and later died of a hematoma (bleeding on the brain). She was not wearing a helmet.
The following month Vail announced all employees and children’s ski school students would be required next season to wear helmets while skiing or snowboarding for work on all five Vail Resorts’ mountains.
Best way to end the season with a bang
For free. As part of the “Vail All the Love” marketing campaign to put skiers on the slopes and heads in beds last season, the annual Spring Back to Vail festival for the first time featured free headliner concerts with the likes of Chris Isaak and O.A.R (Of a Revolution).
The new tradition will continue when next ski season kicks off with the annual Snow Daze festival and more free shows featuring big-name bands.
Earlier in April (sometimes we wonder why so many people come in December), the unsung Vail Film Festival featured its usual stellar lineup. Our favorite? Best of Fest winner Weather Girl, featuring Mark Harmon, Ryan Devlin, Tricia O’Kelley and Patrick Adams.
The cast, sans Harmon, took to the stage of the old Cascade theater with beers in hand and chatted up the audience on the merits of the low-budget, indy film.
Where else but Vail, where the snow was piled high, the sun was shining and the skiing was epic, can you find such a dose of concurrent culture while soaking up the Rocky Mountain vibe?
OK, maybe Aspen and Telluride. But our mountain is better.
