The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“They’re the best in the biz at comparing things”
By Karla Bidmar
Apparently outdoor recreation equipment isn’t the only thing the gear nerds at Blister Gear Review have an opinion on. A recent press release from Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR) shared the excitement of a recent consulting partnership with Blister on deciding just what kind of divider material to use for the recent PowCam upgrade—with a price tag that left many locals scratching their heads.
“Good morning, fellow Butians!” the CBMR press release began. “We read your angry remarks on Bitch and Moan. We heard you making fun of us in the lift lines, so we decided to do something about it. We’re so excited to tell you that we enlisted the help of some of the best outdoor gear consultants in the biz—Blister Gear Review—to help us decide what kind of material to use as the divider for the revamped PowCam! They’re the best in the business at comparing things, and we hope you’re proud of us.”
Blister founder Monohan Shellsworth expressed his excitement about the partnership during a phone interview. “We were thrilled when CBMR approached us with the incredibly intricate task of finding the right material to use for the divider on the PowCam,” said Shellsworth. “We were able to move two more high-paid professional comparer-ers into the valley because of it.”
Figuring out what material to go with on the revamped PowCam was an arduous task, according to Shellsworth.
“You need something that will stand up to the elements—it couldn’t be breakable, has to be waterproof, with a comfortable fit on the screen—we took all of these things into consideration when we were field testing the different materials,” explained Shellsworth.
Glass, ultra-thin high-tech carbon, even those notorious pink donut boxes were all materials in the testing mix, but ultimately, some run-of-the-mill Plexiglas was the material of choice.
“We wondered about flair, like if the Plexiglas should represent a new kind of CBMR, something with a fancy, gilded edge, but we felt we should give the locals a boost and keep it simple,” Shellsworth mentioned.
But the real concern for locals wasn’t the flair on the new PowCam, but rather the price tag for the consulting work done by the company, which came in at $600,000.
In response to the resulting head scratching and bashing in local forums, Hahn Dorten, executive director of the Tourism and Prosperity Partnership had this to say: “$600,000 might seem like a lot to invest in something like this, and we don’t expect anyone to understand these things, because let’s face it, no one gets why we want to bring more tourists here, but it’s well worth the reach Blister has. The kind of audience they have—the ones interested in things like Plexiglas versus regular glass, versus donut boxes, versus carbon fiber stringers, versus military-grade steel thingies—those are the tourists we want here.”
When asked exactly what kind of reach, or deliverables, or impact this consulting partnership is expected to have, CBMR representatives did not comment.
