Crested Butte – With Rush rocking on the CD player inside the cab of the giant yellow bulldozer, Carl Campbell skillfully moved a large mound of black dirt on Mount Crested Butte’s northwest side.
“Snow is way easier to push around than dirt,” said Campbell, who has 10 years experience as a snow groomer. “Manipulating the earth, that’s where the skill comes in.”
Campbell is part of a crew of 10 Crested Butte Mountain Resort Sno-Cat drivers who have been hired by the resort to help construct roads for the company’s newest batch of ski-in, ski-out home sites.
Ski resorts typically keep a smaller crew on in the summer to do jobs such as trail maintenance. But for Crested Butte’s Sno-Cat crew, the on-mountain construction job is an opportunity for guaranteed year-round work in an industry defined by its seasonal nature.
“It’s all about job security,” said Alyosha Paden, a Sno-Cat driver for 12 years. “Trying to live here, to have a family here, it’s expensive. This will help me pull it off.”
Using a large number of their seasonal employees year-round is a practice that Tim and Diane Mueller, who purchased Crested Butte ski resort in March 2004, have had in place at their Vermont ski resort for more than 20 years.
“The real idea behind it is it keeps them on our team,” Tim Mueller said. “It also assures that the project gets done to our liking because the people who are building it are also the people who have to maintain it in the winter.”
The Sno-Cat crew will spend the summer turning 20,000 cubic yards of dirt into a winding road that will access the second phase of the 400-acre Prospect development, which features 23 single-family home sites costing up to $1.3 million.
The Prospect development is part of the Muellers’ $57.3 million pledge to fund improvements at the ski area and its aging base village during the 2005-06 ski season.
That commitment has helped spur a real- estate boom in the East River valley. Crested Butte real-estate listings sold in 2004 jumped 133 percent over the previous year, the company said. Gross sales were up 127 percent, or more than $211 million.
“It’s my belief that a lot of the sales are tied to the new ownership of the mountain and the excitement that they’re bringing in with their development plans,” said Bill Babbitt, a local real-estate agent and councilman for Mount Crested Butte, the resort community up the hill from the town of Crested Butte.
Next month, the Muellers will break ground on their largest endeavor: three new buildings in the area’s slopeside village, being built by Centennial’s Haselden Construction.
Recently renamed Mountaineer Square, the development includes 93 slopeside condominiums, roughly 36,000 square feet of retail space, a spa and fitness center and convention facilities for up to 350 people.
The condos range in price from $310,000 to $1.8 million.
“The market in Crested Butte is not as mature or as pricey as some of the other mountain communities,” Tim Mueller said. “We don’t have the Aspen and Vail pricing yet. I think buyers see that there is good potential for appreciation in the future.”
For the Sno-Cat crew, they hope the summer work at Prospect will mean extra money lining their pockets before they return to the cold nights of snowmaking Nov. 1.
“There is a lot more overtime,” said Mo Finney, the only female Sno-Cat crewmember to stay on for the summer. “The season is so short, by August we’re going to be working seven days a week.”
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
