Skiing Mogul Everett Kircher Perseverance

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Article Title: "Skiing Mogul Everett Kircher Perseverance: His tenacity helped plow new inroads in the resort world "
Author: MARILYN ALVA Section: Leaders & Success
Date: 9/17/2003
Skiing in the 1940s wasn't widespread in the U.S., and Michigan was anything but a ski mecca. The best Michigan had to offer was a 250-foot vertical course on a hill in Gaylord. But young Everett Kircher of Detroit, a car dealer and avid skier, was determined to find a steeper hill - a real mountain - so that he and other Michigan skiers wouldn't have to travel to Sun Valley, Idaho; Stowe, Vt.; or Mount Tremblant in Canada. Most of all, he wanted Michigan to have its own ski resort, one that would popularize skiing for the public rather than just for the elite - the rich and famous celebrities who frequented places like Sun Valley. With two ski buddies, Kircher found a 1,150-foot ridge outside the crossroads town of Boyne Falls in the lower peninsula of northwest Michigan. It had a 500-foot vertical drop, about double any other ski area in the state. But the slope was still little more than a hill. The owner of the property thought the idea of a ski resort there was so ludicrous that he sold them the land for next to nothing - $1. Kircher didn't take much to the word "no" and pursued his dream, even after his two partners bowed out of the business. "He was like a tenacious pit bull," said Art Tebo, the longtime chief operating officer under Kircher of what later became Boyne USA. "He would grab on to something until it was chewed up and understood. He would say, 'There's gotta be a way.' " It might have been a hill, but starting in 1949 Kircher made it into a mountain - a Swiss Alps-style mountain ski resort that he named Boyne Mountain. Kircher didn't stop there. He bought and improved another ski resort several miles to the north, Boyne Highlands Resort, followed by Bay Harbor Golf Club on Lake Michigan, Big Sky in Montana and others in the Rockies and Pacific Northwest. By the time Kircher died early last year at 85 - working until the end - Boyne USA was the largest family-owned resort empire in the U.S. Three of his four children continue to run the business. Boyne's Cypress Mountain ski resort in Vancouver, British Columbia, will co-host contests at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Hire The Best From the start, Kircher sought out the best experts he could find. To lay out the first runs at Boyne Mountain, he hired a noted ski instructor from Sun Valley. The first run was a challenging, 45-degree pitch, which lured skillful skiers from Detroit and Chicago. He convinced Norwegian Olympic gold medalist Stein Eriksen to head up a new ski school at Boyne Mountain and teach students the new "reverse shoulder" method. By 1954 the school was booming, with 400 to 500 students paying for family-week packages, including ski classes. On weekends, the resort attracted about 1,500 skiers. When Eriksen left, Austrian Olympic skier Othmar Schneider took his place. Seeing the success of Kircher's ski operations, other ski resorts opened around them, adding to the new winter tourist economy of the region. Kircher's influence on skiing was also felt far beyond the Midwest. "His was the blueprint for most major ski resorts," Tebo said. "He took the Sun Valley theme to a family level." In 2000, Ski Magazine named Kircher "one of the top 100 most influential skiers of all time." Kircher had plenty of his own ideas. Often they were improvements to existing ones. "I'm not one who needs to reinvent the wheel - just improve it whenever possible," Kircher said in "Everett Kircher, Michigan's Resort Pioneer," published in 1998. Take snow. From his start as a skiing entrepreneur, Kircher worked to improve on what he called one of Mother Nature's greatest gifts. Starting with techniques used in a couple of early makeshift snowmaking machines, he began experimenting with different contraptions - combining compressors, sprinkler nozzles, tripods and hoses. After several tries, he finally patented and licensed the Boyne Snowmaker, later named the Highlands Snow Gun. It used less electricity and less air per pound of water than other makeshift systems and made snow at 30 degrees, at least two degrees higher than others. Hundreds of ski areas around the world came to use them. Even after it was a success, Kircher kept tinkering with his invention. To make the snow spread farther, he mounted the snow guns on towers. Because the snow crystals were airborne longer, the snow turned out drier and made better powder. While costly to operate, the snowmaking systems gave Kircher the ability to extend his skiing season into the shoulder months. The snowmakers were also good insurance against unexpected thaws. In the famously warm holiday season of 1994-95, when other ski runs were bare brown, Kircher's Michigan runs enjoyed three to four feet of snow. Kircher rushed out "Guaranteed Skiing" ads in papers and on radio and TV. Kircher also pioneered snow-packing and snow-grooming gear, as well as bigger and faster ski lifts. Starting with a used, single-chair ski lift - the first to come to northern Michigan - Kircher devised a double lift, then the world's first triple and its first quad lifts. In the early '90s, he presented Michigan with its first high-speed detachable quad chairlift and the world's first six-seat high-speed chairlift. "Everett was years ahead of everyone when it came to developing and operating a ski resort and attracting the potential skiing public," Eriksen said. Stepping Up To The Tee Skiing wasn't the only sport Kircher helped popularize in the Midwest. He was also instrumental in making northwestern Michigan "America's Summer Golf Capital." He added golf for a practical reason. It made his ski resorts year-round operations. Kircher pursued golf the same way he did skiing, by reading, taking lessons and getting the best experts to help him set up a business. "He was like a sponge, soaking up all of the knowledge he could about the swing," said golf pro Jim Flick, who worked with Kircher. Kircher saw his ski business slow in the late '60s as cheap airfares and package deals made new ski resorts in the Rockies affordable getaways. Kircher didn't wait for his ski business to go downhill for long. He kept upgrading facilities and went after new convention business, which helped fill rooms and ski lifts.