The Outsider | Mountain town residents ready for a shift toward community priorities, away from tourism (2024)

Sneak Peek of the Week

Survey shows resort communities want more focus on residents, less emphasis on tourism

The urbanites who swelled mountain communities in 2020 and 2021 are staying put in their high-country hometowns. Real estate prices remain firmly sky-high. Tourists continue to flock and workers struggle to find housing.

A new survey of 4,000 residents in Eagle, Grand, Pitkin, Routt and Summit counties checked the pulse of mountain communities, where residents new and old, renting workers, policymakers and even second homeowners are feeling their quality of life ebb as the amplified cultural and economic shifts of the pandemic linger.

Many people said they are hoping for more of a focus on residents and community priorities — and maybe less emphasis on tourism. The new community survey commissioned by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments and the Colorado Association of Ski Towns — and conducted by a group of veteran tourism economists known as the Insights Collective — is a benchmark that measures sentiment around the social, political, economic and cultural changes happening in mountain towns. And it delivers a tool to help policymakers craft regulations and measure progress as communities adjust tourism-based economies to better reflect resident concerns.

“We are trying to find that balance between diverse interest groups in the community and recognizing the voice of the community within the tourism economy,” said Insights Collective member Chris Cares, a founding partner and managing director of RRC Associates, which has been measuring and researching resort communities for more than 40 years.

The study showed a surge of new residents and second homeowners in recent years — 27% moved to the area in the past five years and 57% since 2008.

Most of those recent arrivals came from an urban or suburban area, with Denver ranking as the top former home for most new arrivals in mountain towns. Summit and Grand counties have the highest percentage of new residents.

Some of the newcomers do not necessarily have jobs connected to the local economy, making them appear less likely to support policies that lure visitors, which can have consequences for residents who do rely on visitors for their livelihoods. About 40% of respondents were employed by a local business, with 23% saying they were retired, 17% were self-employed and 16% worked for companies outside the region.

Only 36% of the new arrivals own their homes though, which is a sign of the spiking costs of homes since 2019.

The survey asked 29 questions about the quality of life in mountain towns, gauging characteristics that were most important to the community and identifying whether those dynamics were improving or declining.

The results showed that longer-term residents tended to put more value on things like a sense of a community and “a small town atmosphere,” which ranked as the second most important source of a high quality of life in all the counties except for Pitkin and Summit counties, where it ranked first.

Lower income residents tended to count the cost of living and infrastructure — like emergency services, grocery, public transportation and traffic issues — as key components of a higher quality of life.

The survey showed that many mountain town residents see their quality of life in decline. Fewer residents said it was improving. A slight majority of residents said the positives of tourism in mountain towns outweighed the negatives. But most respondents agreed with the statement that “the area is overcrowded because of too many visitors.”

Second homeowners, however, were less likely to see quality of life declining when compared to full-time residents. Second homeowners who rent their properties as short-term rentals have the most positive outlook when it comes to the quality of life in mountain towns. The community assessment differs from previous studies and surveys because it includes second homeowners.

The second-home economy in mountain towns is influential but owners of vacation homes are rarely included in local decision-making.

“We think there’s importance in that second homeowner perspective,” Cares said. “Policymakers would benefit from trying to be clear headed as they try to balance a thriving economy that is dependent on tourism and the quality of life that most second homeowners and full-time residents want and deserve.”

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Breaking Trail

Three years of record participation in outdoor recreation

For so many years, the leaders of the outdoor recreation industry lamented their inability to move the needle on participation in outdoor activities. Year after year, they battled to get more than half of Americans outside to play.

That changed with the pandemic as Americans found the thrills of outdoor recreation. Last year saw a record 57.3% of the U.S. population age 6 and older getting outside for a bit of fun. That’s a 22.2 million increase over 2022, coming to 175.8 million Americans participating in outdoor recreation.

That’s good news. But there are clouds on the horizon. The Outdoor Industry Association’s annual participation report shows a sustained decline in the number of times people get outside for recreation. The frequency of outdoor outings slipped to 62.5 per person a year in 2023, down from a high of 87.4 in 2012.

The most popular activities were hiking, fishing, running, camping and cycling.

The number of core outdoor recreation enthusiasts is also in decline. As is the frequency that those core players get outside. The OIA report calls this sharp drop in frequency “a flashing red warning light for the outdoor industry” that has long relied on the avid outdoor fan to buoy business.

But newcomers to outdoor recreation are getting outside more often than ever before. The challenge for the industry is to get those new arrivals into that core category.

They are increasingly diverse. While most outdoor recreation participants are white (69.7%, which is down from 2022), the percentage of Hispanic and Black participants grew in 2023. The casual outdoor recreation people who get outside 1 to 5 times a year are not interested in the latest and greatest gear and setting speed records.

“Further engagement of new participants requires us to get to know them better and learn more about their motivation for participation in outdoor recreation activities,” the report reads.

The Playground

Both the X Games and Shaun White announce season-long winter sports leagues next year

Action sports is getting an NFL-esque overhaul next year.

After years of one-off events, freeskiing, snowboarding, skateboarding, BMX and freestyle motocross athletes will be competing in global leagues, with winter and summer seasons of events. In the last two weeks, two competing organizations have announced plans to gather athletes into leagues with global events.

The X Games on June 13 announced the most sweeping transformation in its 30-year history, with a new X Games League featuring sponsor-supported teams of athletes competing in four winter and four summer global events a year. Four days later, snowboarding icon Shaun White announced he was launching the first-ever global winter sports competition, with his Snow League featuring men and women skiers and snowboarders competing for a $1.5 million purse in five halfpipe events across the world.

Neither the X Games nor White were too heavy on details about the new plans for revamping action sports. It’s unclear how the two leagues will work together. But it’s evident that winter and summer action sports athletes will have more opportunities to flex their prowess — and make money — in the coming seasons.

Tom Wallisch, a freeskiing legend who now works as a commentator for Olympic and X Games events, said the sponsorship and prize purse dollars flowing to winter athletes has slowed in recent years.

“You can win a gold medal at the X Games and still be in the hole from travel costs,” he said. “There are so many deserving athletes and just a finite amount of money for them.”

Wallisch welcomes more opportunities for athletes to collect more money from teams, sponsors and events.

He appreciates seeing the X Games and White lure new financial backers into winter sports. Spectators could get a chance to see more events if the league plans unfold as expected.

“After so many years, it seems like more people are recognizing this isn’t a bunch of renegade athletes in the X Games. These are legitimate athletes competing in Olympic level competitions that people want to see more often than once a year or once every four years,” he said. “It’s cool to see new money and new interest coming in to create bigger events and give everybody a chance to be a star.”

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The Guide

New HBO doc “Here to Climb” features Boulder climbing icons Sasha DiGiulian and Lynn Hill putting up the first female-bolted route in Boulder Flatirons

It’s apt that pioneering climbers Sasha DiGiulian and Lynn Hill named their new climbing route in the Flatirons above Boulder “The Queen Line.”

“It’s pretty incredible to be the first women to put up a climb in the Flatirons,” Boulder climber DiGiulian told Sun freelancer Colin Bane. “And to do it with my childhood mentor and inspiration was a really cool aspect of the project, just getting to build our friendship together and spend so many big days chatting about life and climbing and learning from each other.”

The Queen Line — a daunting three-pitch 5.13c/d — is featured in a new HBO documentary “Here to Climb,” which traces DiGiulian’s career as a dominating climber. It’s fitting that the film ends with the 32-year-old putting up a new route with 63-year-old climbing legend Hill. DiGiulian grew up with posters of Hill on her bedroom wall. And she is not alone in counting Hill as a mentor. Many of the top female climbers in the world trace inspiration back to the legendary Hill, whose 50-year climbing career includes dozens of first-ascents. Hill has long ranked among the world’s top sport climbers, male or female.

“I knew early on that girls and women were capable of a lot more than they were given credit for in climbing, so it’s not at all surprising to me that there’s a lot of really strong girls and women in the sport now,” Hill told Colin. “Oftentimes, I’ll be at a climbing area and there are more women there than men, or all the women are better climbers than the men. So it’s changed a lot.”

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Puking in wonderland

Joe Blair was psyched. The Eagle Vail resident and his family landed a hard-to-book reservation for Havasu Falls above the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Four days and three nights in one of the most spectacular desert oases in the world, where Havasu Creek drops over a series of travertine-lined falls on its way to the Colorado River.

Days later his crew was crawling up the 8-mile hike after camping next to the waterfall.

“I’m not gonna make it,” his 15-year-old daughter said, doubled over in 100-degree heat and throwing up after every sip of water. His 18-year-old son was aboard a helicopter taking him to the canyon rim. Nearly everyone on the trail was puking.

“So many sick people,” Blair said. “It was horrible.”

Dozens of hikers fell ill after camping on the Havasupai reservation last week at the aqua-blue waterfalls. The Havasupai Tribe and federal and state including Indian Health Services and the Arizona governor’s office are investigating the outbreak of gastrointestinal illnesses. Officials suspect the issue involves a region beyond the campground at Havasu Falls.

Officials in a statement responding to the outbreak said they are hiring more people to clean bathrooms at the campground and the Supai Village near the campground has a clinic that treats residents and ill visitors. Tribal officials said an early June test of a spring at the campground did not indicate any issues.

Blair said eight of his group of 11 fell ill on the trip.

He doubts it was a contamination in the spring in the campground, where visitors filled their water bottles. He thinks it might have been something in the creek water.

“It was over 100 degrees down there and everyone was swimming. We were in the water all day long. Everyone was,” he said. “It’s not like you want to, but you are getting drops of water in your mouth when you are swimming.”

Or it may have been the campground toilets, Blair said.

“Man, those bathrooms,” he said. “People were using them a lot. And in that heat … it was rough.”

Blair said ailing campers were lining up before 2 a.m. to secure a spot on the helicopter, which carries campers who don’t want to do the hike up and down the canyon. Those who didn’t make it on the helicopter were forced to hike. Some rented mules to carry their packs up the steep trail. The outbreak made national headlines.

Blair said the campground, while crowded, was “absolutely gorgeous.”

“All the waterfalls are amazing. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been,” he said. “But those last 15 hours down there was a bit of a black eye on our trip.”

— j

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