Powder Burn: Arson, Money, and Mystery on Vail Mountain

By Daniel Glick and Glick

Book Overview

In October, 1998 an arson caused $12 million in damage at Vail, the country's largest ski area. A shadowy radical environmental group called the Earth Liberation Front claimed credit for what the FBI called the costliest act of ecoterrorism in U.S. history. But as it turns out, credible suspects were everywhere, since Vail was owned by a New York investment firm that had alienated a wide swath of Colorado's high country residents."Who couldn't have done this?" wondered a local sheriff's investigator. More than a clever whodunit, Powder Burn scrapes away the glitz of America's premier ski destination to reveal a cautionary tale about runaway opulance and rapid change in the New West. As the Denver Post put it, "Vail is a microcosm of the disputes over growth raging across the Rockies, and Glick's take on the fire helps to fan the flames." Packed with odd characters and paranoia, with beautiful mountains and despicable actions, Powder Burn is about corporate greed, the environment, a small town and a mysterious unsolved crime. As Vail celebrates its fortieth anniversary with a full season of hoopla and self-promotion, this book makes compelling reading for skiers, true crime enthusiasts, or anyone interested in the environmental, social, and political issues raised by the evolution of the new West.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586481649
• ISBN13: 9781586481643
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Powder Burn

Dan Glick writes an impressive highly interesting treatise on the 1998 arsons on Vail Mountain. This book not only covers the fires but also the money lust and greed of Vail Associates (VA) and serves as a political-social commentary on big business in small Colorado mountain towns. For Coloradans and residents of the Rocky Mountain west, those interested in current social activism, and money hungy Wall Street-ers this is a must read.

We're no longer in Kansas, Dorothy

There's a good reason why the locals call Vail Associates' offices at Avon the "Death Star." Dan Glick brings into focus what has been an amorphic sense in the Colorado region that perhaps what's going on in the Vail Valley isn't a good thing. Since white hat and black hat stereotypes can diminish the discussion, Glick sheds light on the growth-at-any-cost mentality and its long-term effects on animals, both human and other. He lets his major players damn themselves with their own words. His images are rich--I especially appreciate the one of CEO Adam Aaron standing on the deck of his multi-million dollar home at Beaver Creek, wondering why everyone's so cranky about VA's ventures, while just over the ridge, in the cheap seats, sit the trailer parks of Little Mexico with 14 to a unit working at minimum wage. The Vail fires are a lesson in the consequences of oligarchy and dislocation. As a native Coloradan, I thought I couldn't be shocked any more. However, the behind the scenes skull-duggery is worse than I imagined, and Glick turns a story of fire on the mountain into a who-done-it page turner. If you care about mountain environments, this is a "must read."

meticulous journalism; fascinating story

How do you make an unsolved arson case sound interesting? You look beyond the arson to the people and passions that swirl in the background. Glick uses a rather unsatisfying arson investigation (unsatisfying in that no villain was ever identified) as a springboard to exploring a much larger story of environmentalism vs. corporate greed. Most fascinating (and amusing) to me were the chapters about conflicts between the haves and the have-nots in Vail. The anecdotes were so outrageous one would almost think they were fictional! But as Glick so ably demonstrates, truth is stranger -- and more absurd -- than fiction could ever be.

Early Vail

Rather comprehensive about the very early years in Vail. Having an outsider overview the early sixties gives those years perspective. Description of the fire and surrounding events is spellbinding.

Vail Singed Again in Sizzling Arson Probe

If you've ever stood on the rim of the Back Bowls at Vail,looking far across at Blue Sky Basin, poised to descend a slope offresh powder, it's hard to imagine that this place could be tarnished.Vail, Colorado, the U.S.' largest ski resort, has lon had a fabledreputation among skiers. Yet Vail is more than a legendary collectionof trails. It has become a corporate behemoth that has transfigured aonce-serene slice of Rocky Mountain reverie, to such a degree thatsomebody -- in the cold, autumn darkness of October 1998 -- tried tosend a message back by setting some spectacular fires on themountaintop. At first glance, "Powder Burn" is acapitivating "whodunit," an investigation into the arsonthat did $12 million in damage to ski lifts and buildings at the poshresort. Yet the probe of the fires is but an entree to a wider taleof intrigue, a saga of the cultural clash that ensues when outrageouswealth and Wall Street power invades a once-pristine alpine valley andski town. It is a story happening not only in Vail but throughout theWest, as lattes and laptops displace cowboys and pick-up trucks inrural hamlets blessed -- or cursed -- with gorgeous natural amenities.Discovered by skiers, mountain bikers and fly-fishermen, they've beenturned into high-end recreation meccas, catering to "gentlemanranchers" whose 10,000 square-foot getaway homes are more likelyto front a golf course than a working pasture. While the arson waswidely assumed to be the work of "eco-terrorists" opposed tothe ski resort's expansion into prime, old-growth lynx habitat,"Powder Burn" reveals that any number of irate parties couldhave had cause to strike the match.Daniel Glick, a Newsweekcorrespondent who covers the Rocky Mountain West, takes readers on aprovocative trip behind Vail's faux-Alpine facade, into a world wherecorporate logic has defined an entire way of life. "PowderBurn" is really a collection of interwoven stories, eachfascinating in its own right yet most potent when told together. Itis a mystery thriller, an inquiry into a brilliantly dispatched crime.It is a history that challenges the more sugar-coated, coffee-tableversions recently published by a couple of Vail's founders. Glickcharts the transformation of Vail from a "high-altitude lettucepatch" to its current status as a publicly traded corporation,the plum acquisition of of a ruthless New York investment firm headedby a former junk bond trader once the protege of Michael Milken. Itis a portrait of a place and its people, a sort of geo-social analysistold through intimate glimpses of the individuals who call the valleyhome, with varying degrees of commitment.The author's journalistbackground is evident in the book's persistent, meticulous reporting.But "Powder Burn" reads like novel: with electric detail, ittakes the reader inside the minds of a diverse cast of characters,from ski instructors to slope groomers to sheriff's investigators andsociety-types. From struggling coffee-shop owners to the Manha