At the Peak of Fakery

Vancouver-based Intrawest Corp., the biggest snow sports developer in North America, is busy transforming Mammoth Lakes and Squaw Valley into “destination resorts” built around instant villages that attempt to re-create the atmosphere of the European Alps. It’s a pattern the Canadian company has followed at dozens of ski areas, in part because European villages are densely built (an economic plus) as well as charming, or at least faux charming.

Even in Europe, it turns out, Intrawest is doing the same. It’s building an “Alpine” village in the French Alps, complete with a fake French history. Travel and Leisure magazine tells us in its December issue that Intrawest is creating “Arc 1950: Le Village” as part of the sprawling Les Arcs resort, 25 miles west of Mt. Blanc. Le Village is based on a story of two brothers, Alphonse and Antoine, who built inns across the street from one another a century ago. The inns actually opened a year ago, and the rest of the village is going up around them. The brothers, of course, are fiction, and the aim of the story is to make the village seem historic and authentic.

The article, by Jeff Wise, says Le Village represents a powerful trend in ski resort evolution: the base village as profit center.

That certainly holds true in Mammoth and Squaw Valley, where Intrawest investments have caused local property prices to soar. The result is a familiar one. Those who work on the chairlifts or wait on tables in the village can’t afford to own property in town.

As curious as it is that Intrawest is creating a fake Alpine village in the Alps, its California fakery is even deeper.

Mammoth Lakes and Squaw Valley both have rustic histories of their own, steeped in the mining days, mountain adventure and Olympics past. Developers could build resorts around the stories of their founding by grizzled pioneers named Dave McCoy and Alex Cushing, who built their famed ski resorts from scratch after World War II. They are inspiring stories. And they are true.