Squaw Valley Ski Resort


Squaw Valley Ski Resort in Olympic Valley, California, is one of the largest ski areas in the United States, and was the host site of the entire 1960 Winter Olympics. It is the second-largest ski area in Lake Tahoe after Heavenly, with 30 chairlifts, and the only funitel in the U.S. Since Squaw Valley joined forces with Alpine Meadows in 2012, the resorts offer joint access to, 43 lifts and over 270 trails. The resort attracts approximately 600,000 skiers a year. The name is controversial because squaw is an ethnic and sexual slur, historically used for indigenous North American women.
Located west of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada with a base of and a skiable across six peaks, the resort tops out at at Granite Chief. Not far from Donner Pass, the area receives heavy maritime snowfall, frequently receiving or more in a winter.
An aerial tramway rises to an elevation of above sea level. Squaw Valley is home to several annual summer events.

History

Former University of Nevada star skier, Wayne Poulsen, purchased the first of Squaw Valley Ski Resort from the Southern Pacific Railroad. Poulsen already had a history in the area: in 1931, he had placed third at an Olympic trials at Granlibakken in Tahoe City. Shortly after, Poulsen met Harvard alumnus and trained lawyer Alex Cushing, who brought capital, political connections, and increased access to the project. Cushing had fallen in love with Lake Tahoe after a visit to the Sierra Nevada in 1946. After a disagreement over the resort's future, Cushing gained control of the project and became the chairman of Squaw Valley Ski Corporation. The resort opened in 1949, and Cushing remained its chairman until his death.
Cushing modeled the resort after European ski destinations by locating a swimming pool, ice rink, roller disco, and restaurants on the mountain instead of at the base. His designs also brought advanced lift technology to the U.S. for the first time. When Squaw Valley opened, its Squaw One lift was deemed the longest double chairlift in the world.
Squaw Valley's success can be largely attributed to the visibility that came from hosting the 1960 Winter Olympics, a direct result of Cushing's effort and determination. During the planning stages of the 1960 Olympics, Innsbruck, Austria, was the leading choice for the Olympic site. In 1955, however, Cushing secured the bid after winning over the International Olympic Committee in Paris with a scale model of his planned Olympic site. The Winter Olympics in 1960 were the first to be televised live, making the games accessible to millions of viewers in real-time. The event signaled the rise of U.S. skiing to the level of world-famous European skiing, and Squaw Valley's preparedness for the games showed the international community that U.S. ski resorts offered world-class facilities.
Squaw Valley hosted World Cup races in 1969 with four technical events: slalom and giant slalom for both men and women. American Billy Kidd won the men's slalom, followed by U.S. teammates Rick Chaffee and Spider Sabich of Kyburz. The 1969 season saw a record snowpack at Squaw Valley; and over of new snow cancelled the downhills. After an absence of 48 years, women's technical races returned in 2017 and overall leader Mikaela Shiffrin of Colorado won both events.
In 1978, Squaw Valley experienced one of the worst cable car accidents in history. On a stormy afternoon late in the season on Saturday, 15 April, the Tram came off of one of its cables, dropped and then bounced back up, colliding with a cable which sheared through the car; four were killed and 31 injured.
Squaw Valley was purchased by private equity group KSL Capital Partners in November 2010. In September 2011, Alpine Meadows Ski Resort and Squaw Valley Ski Resort announced their intention to merge ownership. The merger united the two popular ski destinations under common management by Squaw's Valley's parent company, KSL Capital Partners, LLC. A year later, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows Ski Resort merged under the new umbrella leadership of Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, LLC. The new company operates as one, with joint lift tickets and single season passes for visitors and free shuttles between its locations, but preserves the individuality of the two resorts. In 2017, KSL Capital, in partnership with Aspen/Snowmass, formed Alterra Mountain Company, which then became the primary owner of Squaw Valley.
Squaw Valley was designated a California Historical Landmark in 1960 during the Olympic Games. The area was dubbed the Pioneer Ski Area of America, commemorating 100 years of skiing in nearby Sierra Nevada mining towns that were the first U.S. locations where organized skiing took place.
Ron Cohen is the resort's COO after the departure of Andrew Wirth.
In June 2020, the owners of Squaw Valley invited Native American leaders to discuss the use of "squaw" in its name, which is now widely considered to be an ethnic and sexist slur. Company spokesperson Christine Horvath stated that the business was creating a plan to review the use of the term and possibly remove it from the resort's name.

Chairlifts

Lower mountain chairs (elev. 6200')

Upper mountain chairs (elev. 8200')

Terrain aspect

Annual snowfall at Squaw Valley can surpass 500 inches.

Alpine Meadows gondola connection

Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, LLC seeks to connect the Alpine Meadows with a "Base-to-Base" gondola. Resort owners need permission from local land managers, including Placer County and the Tahoe National Forest who are currently studying the proposed project's environmental impacts. A number of conservation organizations, including Sierra Watch and the Sierra Club, consider the proposed gondola a threat to Granite Chief Wilderness. In July 2019 Sierra Watch and Granite Chief Wilderness Protection League filed a lawsuit with Squaw Valley challenging Placer County's approval of the gondola project. In January 2020 the United States Forest Service issued its Record of Decision approving a route crossing federal lands. In February 2020, the litigants dropped the suit in exchange for Squaw Valley's commitment to implement measures to mitigate the impact towards the Sierra Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog. The approved gondola is planned to cross the private ski area, White Wolf Mountain, which is owned by Troy Caldwell. Caldwell supports the gondola.

Development controversy

Separate from the approved Squaw Alpine proposed gondola, Squaw Alpine has also prosed a large development in the existing Squaw Valley parking lot area. In 2016, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings submitted a final application for entitlements for its proposed Village at Squaw Valley Specific Plan, a $1billion plan that prompted the Attorney General of California to write a letter of concern to Placer County. The plan would include 850 hotel and condominium units and a 96-foot-tall "Mountain Adventure Camp" featuring a year-round indoor waterpark. According to the environmental review for the project, new development is projected to add 3,300 new car trips to local roads on peak days, and the project would have twenty "significant but unavoidable" impacts".
Sierra Watch created a grassroots campaign to “”, holding public events and circulating an on-line petition in opposition to KSL Capital Partners' proposed expansion plan.
In November 2016, the Placer County Board of Supervisors approved KSL's controversial development proposal in spite of opposition from local conservation organizations, including Sierra Watch. Sierra Watch filed suit to overturn those approvals for violating the California Environmental Quality Act in December 2016.
In 2017, resort owners added a roller coaster to their development proposal.

Lake Tahoe

The Lake Tahoe area is located on the border between California and Nevada. The area centers around Lake Tahoe itself, the second deepest lake in the U.S., which was voted America's "Best Lake" in 2012 by The USA Today. Lake Tahoe is home to 18 ski resorts, including Squaw Valley.