Q: As a longtime executive in hotel management and development, what prompted you to start Echo Mountain in 2006?
A: I am a lifelong skier, born and raised in Colorado, who went to Dartmouth College because I didn’t know how bad Eastern skiing was. I have a hotel management company and a collegiate baseball league with 14 teams in North and South Carolina.
With that travel and sports-management experience, I was interested when I saw the land available a few years ago. Our family looked at a variety of uses for the area, but this was the best. We are all skiers, so it is literally a dream come true.
Q: How do you promote a small, startup ski area in an industry where competitors have big names and even bigger marketing budgets?
A: First, you don’t compete. We recognized that we needed to be different, so we structured ourselves as Denver’s backyard ski and snowboard area.
We kept our lift prices very low and our food prices lower. We put in lights for night skiing so kids could ski after school and adults could ski after work, and welcomed both skiers and snowboarders of all ages.
We recognized we are a feeder area to the resorts. People can start with us when they don’t have a mountain condo or don’t want to fight the I-70 traffic. Later they can experience the resorts when they have more money and time.
Q: Echo Mountain’s growth rate has been impressive since its opening. Is that rate sustainable?
A: Our growth is very sustainable. We have several unique advantages. We are close — 35 miles from downtown Denver. We are cheap — $45 for an adult ticket and $29 for a child.
We are flexible — we have a magic carpet for the children and beginners, a triple chair for the more advanced, and terrain that varies from groomed cruisers to glades to terrain parks. We are friendly — you will not feel like you have been swallowed up in a fancy resort.
We want to be the local area that the Front Range feels is its own, the place where some future Olympian started when he was 5 years old and still comes back to, because it’s home.
Edited for length and clarity by staff writer Steve Raabe.
