WILMINGTON — Bartleby's Books will host a book signing with Chris Diamond, author of “Ski Inc.,” and former president of Mount Snow on Monday, Dec. 12, at 4 p.m.
“You can't make this stuff up” was a refrain Diamond heard regularly during his 44-year career in the ski-resort industry, when he guided major ski resorts from Vermont to Colorado and was intimately involved in the issues shaping the sport, according to a news release.
The author, who holds English degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Massachusetts and is a veteran of the Vietnam War, didn't set out to build a career in the ski business.
But in 1972, he wound up at Killington, where he met resort founder Preston Leete Smith and marketer Foster T. Chandler. Killington at the time was setting the pace in everything from snowmaking to recruiting new skiers, and Diamond was soon immersed in the resort industry.
He was president of Mount Snow from 1977 to 1994, served as vice president for business development and president of the Vermont resorts for S-K- I Ltd from 1994 to 1996, and spent 17 years at the helm of Steamboat before retiring in 2015. He is a past director and chairman of Colorado Ski Country USA and of the National Ski Areas Association, which presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.
Diamond, who now lives in Steamboat Springs with his wife, Eileen, witnessed the seminal moments in resort ownership as it evolved from single-area entrepreneurs to conglomerates, including the dramatic implosion of Les Otten's American Skiing Company and the downsizing of Intrawest during the 2008 Great Recession. According to the news release, “He isn't shy in pointing out mistakes made along the way, including his own.”