January 2006

Read this article at outsidemag.com

In 1997, WHEN KARL KAPUSCINSKI TOOK OVER management of Mountain High, a 220-acre ski area an hour east of Los Angeles, he needed to attract new customers to the struggling resort. But instead of laying down more groomed runs and valet parking, Kapuscinski transformed the mountain into a massive freestyle playpen. He added a halfpipe and 120 other terrain features, like boxes and rails, supplemented cheeseburgers and cocoa by the lodge fire with fish tacos and Red Bull in the parking lot, and began promoting the mountain at local beaches and on hip-hop stations and Spanish-language television.

The idea, says the 40-year-old Kapuscinski—who was the executive director of the Spirit Mountain ski resort, in Duluth, Minnesota, before taking over Mountain High—was to create an experience more suited to Southern California's ethnic and cultural mix. "Mountain High is a skateboard park moved into the mountains," he says.

Today, the once struggling resort is the busiest in SoCal. With Mountain High getting more than 500,000 visitors annually, no ski area in the country does more business on less terrain. And in a state where minorities are now the majority and Hispanics will soon eclipse whites as the largest ethnic group, Mountain High can boast that 48 percent of its visitors are nonwhite (24 percent Asian, 13 percent African American, and 11 percent Hispanic), compared with 12 percent at ski areas nationwide. Not coincidentally, more than 80 percent of Mountain High's visitors show up on snowboards. "Snowboarding is a first-generation sport," says Kapuscinski. "It's not something your grandfather did."

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