Valley’s major players plan new and improved events for winter season

Making CB the new “it” location

The Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce hosted a winter tourism forecast on Thursday, November 10, where the name of the game seemed to be innovation. During a time when the summer is continually outpacing itself in tourism and sales tax income, the winter season’s major players seem to be striving to bring more people to the valley, keep them here longer and extend the winter season.

Representatives from each of the major players shared their plans for winter, with big news coming from CS Irwin’s administrative director Kyra Martin. Now the name is simply Irwin—the backcountry ski guides have launched a new name, a new logo and a new lodge: Scarp Ridge Lodge, an upscale rental at the site of the former Crested Butte Club in downtown Crested Butte.
The move comes in conjunction with the November 11, 2011 launch of Irwin’s parent company, a global adventure brand, Eleven.
Crested Butte will be one of five worldwide destinations that aim to provide luxury outdoor adventure—experiences that measure up to an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10. As part of that, Irwin is offering year-round adventure, but cat skiing and more than 738 inches of snow last season are garnering some significant attention.
Martin told the crowd that Irwin has been covered by the Robb Report, Mountain Magazine, Outside Magazine, the Denver Post and locally produced Stokelab. As of November 7, cat skiing was 83 percent booked—24 percent ahead of last year and 74 percent of the people are repeat clients.
“We’re seeing a lot of quality over quantity. With that said, though, people are coming here to ski and snowboard but their trip is about more than one activity. We’re all about selling the Crested Butte experience, rounding out the Crested Butte experience, bringing a new adventure to the valley and keeping people here longer,” Martin said.
Irwin’s guests also bring a new demographic to Crested Butte. Martin said 49 percent of guests come from the East Coast, 15 percent from Texas, 13 percent from Colorado and 12 percent from the West Coast. Guys trips make up 20 percent of their clients. The latter, she said, spend the most money in town, getting massages every day going out to dinner and hitting the bars.
“We’re seeing that Crested Butte is the new ‘it’ location to not be seen. That is becoming the thing in the celebrity world,” Martin said.
This year, Irwin will offer a second “powder cat,” a snowcat that will be released for reservations 48 hours in advance at a reduced rate. Late season cat skiing will also be offered at a reduced rate as soon as the mountain closes in April. (At a $150 discount per person, prices will be $350 a day per person.)
But Irwin is not the only valley business shaking things up. Adaptive Sports Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and program supervisor Pat Addabbo reported that the organization is working toward a goal of 2,300 activities this winter. That’s a 15 percent growth rate over last winter.
New program offerings include a ladies getaway for women with disabilities. According to Addabbo, Adaptive is considering adding a backcountry hut trip the week after the resort closes to extend the winter season.
Adaptive interns have also been hard at work creating a website, www.cbaccessibility.com, that outlines accessible housing throughout the valley.
“If you have accessible or semi-accessible units, they’re doing a full-on web page with tours and overviews of each property and how it would work for people with special needs,” Addabbo said.
Over at the Crested Butte Nordic Center, local cross-country skiing has hit the national stage. This fall, the Alley Loop was selected as one of the American Ski Marathon Series races, the Nordic Council took over the Elk Mountains Grand Traverse and according to board member Skip Berkshire, the Nordic Center is getting a solid reputation for its Thanksgiving ski camp. As of November 7, registration was already at two-thirds of last year’s total participation.
“We’re getting good name recognition and drawing a lot of people for that event from the region, New Mexico and the Front Range. They’ve really come to understand that we offer early season skiing when nobody else does,” Berkshire said.
The Alley Loop and the Grand Traverse could also bring more people to town this year. Last year’s Alley Loop drew a record 550 participants, and this year’s race is expected to draw more than 600 racers on February 4. New additions to the weekend lineup, like a Sunday brunch, aim to keep those racers here longer, just as a new two-day expo before the Grand Traverse will give racers reason to arrive early and spend more time in town.
Add big-name title sponsors like Gore-Tex and Outdoor Research to the Grand Traverse, a newly honed relationship with Aspen and a $400 entry fee, and it’s clearly a new era for the Traverse.
Up on the mountain, CBMR is looking forward to taking the new zip line, which sold out every day this summer, into the winter season. The resort will be open for skiing and zipping from November 23, 2011 until April 8, 2012. That’s eight days longer than last year.
According to Jeff Moffett, director of Crested Butte Vacations, room nights on the mountain are up 8 percent for the season based on the same time last year. Group nights are up 7 percent, with exciting groups like the Austrian Alpine snowboard team and the return of Country in the Rockies, now known as the Crested Butte Songwriter’s Festival.
The goal is to increase skier days by 2.6 percent over last year, to roughly 370,000 skier visits. Moffett cautioned, however, that with rising airfares and 11 percent fewer seats flying into Gunnison, it will take a community-wide effort to continue bringing visitors to Crested Butte. While second-home owners will still find ways to get to Crested Butte, Moffett said, feedback indicates that fewer of their friends will make the trip.
“We’re going to really need to work together as a community… to fill these flights because the best way to maintain the flight program is to grow the air service, and the best way to do that is to use the service you have,” Moffett said.
This winter, CBMR will also play host to a new event February 10-12: Yoga Rocks the Butte. Created by Monica Mesa, owner of Yoga for the Peaceful, the first-ever yoga winterfest will bring big names from the worldwide yoga community to Crested Butte, including renowned teacher Shiva Rea.
“Winter is my favorite season… I describe [Crested Butte] to my family as a winter wonderland where you can roast chestnuts on the open fire, ride on a sleigh. To me it’s magic … and so for that reason, I convinced all these people to come out here, to put it in their schedules that are sometimes two to three years booked out,” Mesa said.
Mesa hopes the inaugural event, which will include yoga classes for kids, will bring about 500 people to Crested Butte. Overall, it’s just one of more than 100 events planned for the valley this winter. It’s time to let the snow fly.