Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery in Vail Valley

Early on the morning of October 19, 1998, several raging fires caused $12 million in damage to ski lifts and buildings in Vail, Colo. Because construction of a vast new ski area that had been vehemently opposed by environmental groups was slated to begin that very day, arson was immediately suspected, and investigations revealed that the fires had been deliberately set. However, although a radical environmental organization claimed responsibility, the identity of the perpetrators was never discovered, and many local residents--darkly noting that the episode brought Vail's owners some much-needed sympathetic press, as well as insurance money that allowed them to rebuild outdated facilities--continue to believe the resort itself masterminded the event. Though unable to answer the all-important question of ""whodunit,"" Glick, a Newsweek special correspondent for the Rocky Mountain region, provides a fascinating account of the tensions and cultural juxtapositions--sometimes merely odd, sometimes deeply unsettling--that lurk beneath the idyllic, ersatz-Tyrolean surface of America's largest ski resort. Colorado, Glick notes, is populated by a volatile mix of diehard environmentalists and ruthless real estate barons, counterculture ski bums and titans of industry--all of whom coalesce in, and are particularly passionate about, places like Vail. Indeed, federal investigators found themselves confronted with a bewildering proliferation of suspects for the fires: it seemed that everyone within a 50-mile radius of the resort had a serious grudge against its owners, whose corporate HQ was known locally as ""the Death Star."" Combining solid investigative reporting with engrossing accounts of high-stakes wheeling and dealing and tantalizing glimpses of the glitzy life of the superrich, this is an irresistible story which, in Glick's hands, also reaches provocative conclusions about the more wide-ranging conflicts that beset the so-called New West. (Jan.)