Revenge of the ski bums: The story of wresting back Mount Bachelor

BEND, Ore. — It started as a joke on a Facebook forum in August, when news came that Mount Bachelor, one of the country’s biggest ski areas, was for sale.

“I’ve got $20 and some old boards I can pitch in,” wrote Dan Cochrane, a snowboarder from nearby Bend, Oregon.

Chris Porter, another local snowboarder and a high school business teacher, did not know Cochrane. He responded with a more sober tone.

“If anybody is serious about doing a feasibility study, I’m all in and would love to chat,” Porter wrote.

As so began a quixotic quest to raise about $200 million and wrest Mount Bachelor from the corporate titans of a consolidating industry.

Cochrane, 52, and Porter, 43, turned the breezy online exchange into a what-if conversation. Buzz built around the idea. The men met for the first time when local media interviewed them together. Porter had the foresight to establish a website and an email address for the venture.

There were 2,000 messages of support within two days. Some people wanted to share memories. Some offered money, from a few bucks to six figures. Some volunteered time and expertise, among them pro bono lawyers, well-connected financial experts and social media influencers.

Call it an awakening, part of a ski bum uprising. Cochrane and Porter called it Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. and assembled a loose team. Powdr, a Utah-based outdoor-recreation company that has owned Mount Bachelor since 2001, did not reveal an asking price, but the local group began securing major donors.

But this is not really a story about a potential business deal. It’s not about how it could be done but why it would be.

“Mount Bachelor is the center stone of our community,” said Cochrane, a real estate appraiser.

He spoke about culture, community and identity. Nostalgia. Connection. The need to preserve all of it.

“It’s why we live here,” he said. “It’s why my kids were born in Bend. Without that mountain, we wouldn’t be here.”

Porter spent years working for wealth management and private equity companies in Portland, Oregon, before moving to Bend in 2018 to recalibrate his work-life balance and be close to Mount Bachelor.

“I want this to be a place that the average Northwest family and their golden retriever can come visit and still have enough money for a second family vacation that year,” he said. Around the country, daily tickets at some areas have soared past $300. Mountain resorts are trending toward exclusivity. Some are going private.

It was suggested that maybe, just maybe, Porter and Cochrane were part of an anti-corporate, take-it-back revolution, in skiing and beyond.

“Why not make the enthusiast the owner?” Porter asked.

Soon, Porter and Cochrane were meeting with lawyers and big-money investors, preparing an offer to take the mountain back.

Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. (motto: Powder to the People) is not trying to buy an actual mountain. Mount Bachelor is public land. What’s at stake are things like lifts and lodges and permits to operate. What the group wants, really, is a stronger say.

“We’re not saying what’s best for Mount Bachelor,” said Ryan Andrews, 41, a Bend real estate investor who is serving as a chief financial officer for the local ownership push. “But let’s let the users and community decide, not a boardroom in Vail or anywhere else.”

Ski areas are a tough business. Mountain ranges are graveyards of ghost areas, abandoned by skittish investors or undone by the fickleness of weather gods. Those operating today are at the front line of climate change, mostly losing. As mom-and-pop areas struggle, corporations such as Vail Resorts, Alterra Mountain Co. and Powdr have spent the past few decades buying and trading larger ski areas, consolidating them through balance sheets and multi-resort season passes.

The resort effect has not always been kind to locals. Some towns have become seasonal playgrounds for the rich, with workers unable to afford to live anywhere close.

Mike Rogge, editor and publisher of the outdoor magazine Mountain Gazette, summed up collective feelings in a social media post.

“The ski industry, specifically the resort side, I fear is losing the narrative,” he wrote. “Guests are your lifeblood. Locals are your culture. Without either of them you’re an empty theme park.”

Mount Bachelor, originally called Bachelor Butte, was founded as a local ski hill by Bend’s Bill Healy and others in 1958. For decades, the ski area was an insider’s secret, but the resort consolidation of the 1990s came for Mount Bachelor. Powdr bought a majority stake in 2001 for a reported $28 million.

It still feels like a throwback. There are no mountainside accommodations. The humble base lodges were built decades ago, as were most of the lifts. Most parking is still free, and except for the few who sleep in campers and vans in the parking lot, skiers and snowboarders drive each day from the booming town of Bend, where the population has surged past 100,000. About 80% of Mount Bachelor’s customers are local.

The resort confirms that Mount Bachelor is profitable; locals presume that Powdr feeds the money to other resorts and pieces of its portfolio. (Powdr will not comment on financial numbers.) Visitors complain about old lifts and frequent malfunctions. On a recent sunny Tuesday, the area lost power, shutting down lifts for hours.

Bend’s mayor, Melanie Kebler, would love for locals to buy the mountain back.

“We already feel like we have ownership, emotionally,” she said. “Why not make it real?”

The question is complicated, and not just financially. No one is proposing shutting the place down. Other owners might turn out to be great. Among the stakes are 1,100 jobs at Mount Bachelor during the winter.

But the locals worry about what some other buyer might dream up. Will new owners ignore the mountain, squeeze profits and flip it again? Will they conjure a Vail-style village of high-end hotels and condos, restaurants and luxury shops where the free parking is now?

What will Mount Bachelor become? And for whom?

It is unclear whether Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. has a viable chance. Things are moving quickly. Others are making bids, though Powdr officials declined to name interested parties.

Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. believes there are at least two other potential suitors: Vail, the industry behemoth, and Mountain Capital Partners, which owns about 15 ski areas, mostly midsize ones in the West. Both companies declined to comment.

“Over the past few months, we’ve conducted due diligence and walk-throughs, and we are now accepting offers from selected parties,” said Stacey Hutchinson, a vice president of Powdr.

Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. is on the outside. It has not been granted a walk-through or access to the “data room” to conduct due diligence. Group members said they had meetings with Powdr’s brokers this fall and that they believed that they had met every financial requirement. They sent an overnight letter directly to Powdr in December, they said, to reiterate their interest. They have heard nothing since.

The group said that it had secured multiple high-dollar investors, with ties to the area and tens of millions of dollars to spend, who hope to sell smaller shares to community members. It has powerful people, including Oregon’s two U.S. senators, vouching for the veracity of its bid and the desire for local ownership. It would like a chance to beat any other offer.

Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. plans to submit a formal bid to Powdr any day now, probably in the neighborhood of $200 million. Will it be in time? Will it be enough? Will it be considered?

“We will diligently review all submitted offers and take the time to carefully assess each prospective buyer,” Hutchinson said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.