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Show tinues explaining, “...Build ramps like this for loading.” The work connects him to his parents. His favorite memory is of building the chairlift that spans 1600 vertical feet to the top of Beaver Mountain. Completed in 1969, this lift had been a lifelong dream of his father, so the family named it “Harry's Dream.” Ted still mentions his father often. “Dad always says anybody can give their business away,” he says. “It takes a pretty good man to keep it.” To make sure he keeps it, he takes few risks. He doesn’t trust expensive marketing schemes aimed at people far away, and won’t produce a mailer. Instead, he donates a few lift tickets for promotions at ~ Utah State sporting events, where he’s sure to reach several thousand students living close to the ski area. He has been equally cautious about expansion. He won’t bank on a new chairlift attracting skiers. Before building one, he wants to be grossing enough already to make the payments on it. | Ted’s caution helped keep Beaver Mountain afloat during the ‘70s and ‘80s, when more — than 200 small ski THE THIRD GENERATION ost of Beaver Mountain’s 22 runs fan out from the top of a single long ridge line, descending at moderate, consistent pitches through groves of quaking aspens and pines. Of the three chairlifts, only Harry’s Dream reaches the ridge top. To many skiers, the runs from atop Harry’s Dream seem longer than the actual 1,600-verticalfoot drop—unlike most at Park City, these runs have unbroken fall lines. The snow on the slopes is natural, abundant (400 inches a year), and sees minimal able, articulate man. “So it just blows me away that he doesn’t ski anymore. It’s just unfathomable, as much as | like to ski—and supposedly he was the same way at my age. | don’t want to do that. | don’t want to get burned out on it and have it become such a job that | don’t enjoy it anymore.” Because Travis likes to travel and has a strong independent streak, family members ALAST VISIT — WITH LUELLA state and federal land, Beaver Mountain _may soon expand. The swap, which has skier traffic. So it tends to remain softer, longer than at the large ski areas. The mood at the ski area is as forgiving as the snow. Even on crowded days, the lift lines at Beaver Mountain feel less intense than at the big areas. The ski area draws a country crowd, areas, many of them already overextended, folded after bad snow Saueaso arr srararersnecsssshetectehense. tier. retetoenats ian enens years. Even today, a ski area like Beaver Mountain, have questioned his interest in Beaver Mountain. But when he is asked about the possibility of his family selling out to a large corporation, he answers without hesitation, saying, “That alone would be enough to keep me here.” Unlike his father, who looks to the past snow-making, can be crippled by a dry year. Although Beaver Mountain has almost no snowmaking, it survived the lean years because its debts for inspiration, Travis looks ahead, and his interest appears intense. He wants to were minimal, learn more about the workings of other because family ski areas. When he skis other mountains, he studies the designs of the chairlifts and how the runs have been cut. “People think I’m kind of funny,” he says. He sometimes differs with his father over changes at Beaver Mountain. Years ago, he pushed for all-area privileges for members donated labor, and because > three of the Seeholzers put second mortgages on their homes. ‘Ted’s conservative budgets, together with Forest Service restrictions and the | Seeholzers’ own sense of nostalgia, have kept Beaver Mountain looking much the same today as it did 25 years ago. The Beaver Mountain logo, a somnambulantlooking Beaver on skis, is the same one drawn by a high school student in a contest © in 1948. The A-Frame lodge, with hand- painted signs and old deer heads on the walls, remains much as it was in 1969—the same year the most popular chairlift, Harry’s Dream, was built. Although electric lines were hooked up in the late ‘80's, no phones connect the mountain with the out- side. Despite its rustic quality, however, the lodge is always spotless, and the chairlifts, according to one lift inspector, work like new. snowboarders, whom Ted once called more like a square dance than a rock concert. At the front of the lift lines, skiers flash season passes featuring photos that they themselves provide. One girl’s pass shows her playing tennis. At 28, Ted’s son, Travis, doesn’t mind this environment. He works his share of 70hour work weeks at Beaver Mountain, with- out complaint. But while Ted seems ubiquitous at the ski area during winter, Travis has been known to vanish—especially when he wants to make turns. Skiing makes him happy, relaxes him, and lets him learn ~ about the mountain. He is joking when he says his title is “snow quality-control inspector.” But Travis’s role as an informal ski ambassador seems as important as any. He cannot believe that his father, who like all of Luella’s children was a fine skier, no longer ventures onto the slopes. “Dad was a hell of a skier,” says Travis, a person- “the type of kids who wear earrings in their ears and earrings in their nose.” -Snowboarders are now welcome everywhere on the mountain. Travis also believes the ski area should advertise more, starting in Rock Springs and Green River, Wyo. If that worked, he would consider targeting powder Salt Lake and Ogden. “Friends of come around, and they’re blown the powder skiing,” he says. “You skiers in mine away by can come - here a week after a storm and on the better aspects still find good powder.” Later, as if to prove his point, he tra- verses south from the top of Harry's Dream, passing snowboarders flopped in snow, stopping finally above a lightly gladed slope. It has not snowed for days, but 10 inches of untracked powder blanket the hillside. Travis pushes off, then telemarks smoothly downhill, disappearing into the glades. already been approved by the House of Representatives, would give Utah control of the land leased by the Seeholzers, enabling the Seeholzers to change the base area. If the legislation passes, they'll build a new Ski Patrol building and expand the lodge, says Ted. A tubing hill has already been approved. The family is not interested in constructing overnight lodging, but other investors might be. Travis realizes that if the resort booms, some of the best things about it would change. But he also knows that Beaver Mountain is a business. “In some ways [expansion] is sort of a drag, because it’s so low key and nice now,” says Travis. “But the dollars are what's going to get you there.” In the last years of Luella’s life, she worried less about dilemmas like these. Instead, she contented herself by sifting through the memories of the ski area that was her life. Like the ground at Beaver Mountain, some of those memories resur- faced in the spring of 1996, when | visited with her for the last time. — Sitting in a lawn chair at the base of the ski area, she brightened as she recalled a particular snowy night more than 30 years ago, when she was alone with Harry and their day’s work was finally done. As always, she said, they had been the last to leave the mountain. “We found out we weren’t as smart as we thought, because we couldn’t drive out of the snow. It was so deep. So Harry went and got the tractor, and hooked it onto the car. As we went down the hill, he towed me in the car, and it was just beautiful. | think about it often, how beautiful it was coming down the road, with the snow and the two sets of lights. It was the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in all my life. And the children had all gone home.” 111 866L ‘9 LSNONV| LN which cannot afford extensive |
