The Alpine Country Lodge
At the end of a nondescript road in the mountain town of Truckee, California, sits the abandoned Alpine Country Lodge. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the old hotel. It was never famous in any way, experienced no newsworthy scandals, and has an almost non-existent presence on Google. It is, by most measures, nothing more than a typical failed small business in a small American town.
It is precisely this lack of exceptionality, however, that illustrates a point: it’s hard to make it in a mountain town. This challenge holds true for people as well as businesses. Many people move to the mountains to Live the Dream, only to find out life here is much tougher than they had initially expected. The winters are harsh and long, the air is thin and dry, and for some people isolation isn’t merely a geographic issue but a social one as well. It’s difficult to be accepted as a local, and to the most die-hard natives you’re only one if you were born here. Stable well-paying jobs are rare, though telecommuting is increasingly helping to address the problem for some people fortunate enough to have the option (myself included).
I hold the opinion that anybody less than 50 years old who is skiing more than 50 days a year is making compromises. Those compromises might be sacrifices in one’s career, income, social opportunities, or personal relationships. Stay long enough, and you may even hamper your future potential for a traditional career back in the “real world” of urban America.
The Alpine Country Lodge is spread out over about two and a half semi-wooded acres set right next to Donner Creek; it included 28 rooms distributed among a few main buildings plus a small cottage for the manager. It would have been an idyllic site many years ago, but the constant roar of nearby Highway 80 makes that all but impossible now. By the end of its lifespan, it had fallen into a sad state. The few guest reviews that still exist are atrocious, with comments like “room was like a closet, never coming back,” “I would not recommend this place to my worst enemy,” and “no hot water!”. One review website describes it as “a quaint 50s motor lodge,” which seems quite a stretch even in real-estate-speak.
Listed for sale while still operating in August 2006, it remained unsold for years. Relisted in July 2013, it closed its doors sometime the following year, and as of December 2017 appears to be in the process of a sale. While it sat idle, the property could have been yours for a cool $1.2 million, and how you interpret that statement probably depends on where you live.
Only about three hours down the road from Truckee lies San Francisco, where the median home price crossed the million-dollar mark in 2016. If you’re reading this from the comfort of your easy chair in your Pacific Heights condo, you’re likely thinking, “Wow, for the price of my small one-bedroom unit I could own 2.5 acres in the countryside.” To somebody living and working in a mountain town, however, the idea of saving a million dollars for any purpose by working hard at their two or three jobs — frequently service, or seasonal — sounds ridiculous.
In a ski town, there is an unmistakable gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the tourists and the locals. The chasm generates animosity both from and toward the residents, which doesn’t make living here any easier. (To be fair, animosity and jealousy extend to the tourists’ side too, but that’s a topic for another day.) To a local struggling to pay their bills on time, a weekender up from the Bay driving around in their Porsche — in the winter, often recklessly and without snow tires — and spending money like it’s going out of style feels both frivolous and insulting. The fact that tourism is a huge part of the local economy does little to soothe frayed emotions. Finding the proper balance between recreation and conservation has been a hotly debated topic in recent years, and mountain towns are often at the front lines of the battle.
Walking alone around the grounds of the old lodge makes for a contemplative experience. The boarded-up windows, peeling paint, missing floorboards, and piles of trash strewn around speak to the difficulty of surviving in the mountains. It almost seems like the lodge’s only solution to fit in with nature was to return to it.
Despite all the hardships and challenges, people continue moving to mountain towns. This is understandable as there are many benefits, quality of life being first and foremost. While “quality of life” is admittedly a subjective term, if your definition of it includes clean air, a slower daily pace, and a deeper relationship with the natural world, it might be worth it for you.
Thinking about this made me reflect upon why some people manage to make it here and others don’t. I’m not sure there’s a simple answer or a distinct set of qualities which will set one up for success. Being able to sacrifice creature comforts and risk financial security are good starting points. The hardship-versus-reward equation is a highly individual one; some people are cut out for life here, and some aren’t.
For myself, the love of the mountains makes the sacrifices worthwhile. In my opinion, the visual majesty of the Sierra Nevada range, the ability to walk out my front door and be active every day, and the peace and quiet of the backcountry are quality-of-life issues which justify the forfeiture of many urban conveniences.
No community is perfect, but for the most part mountain towns are populated by down-to-earth, hardy people with a shared love of the outdoors as their common bond. It’s not a life for everybody, but if you don’t try, you’ll never know if it’s for you or not. And who knows? Unlike the old Alpine Country Lodge, you may find your groove and fit in perfectly, thriving and prospering here for many years to come.
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Five Frames Stories are a series of short-short visual adventure stories to help us connect and engage with the outdoor world. They are a somewhat-haphazard and typically serendipitous collection of tales about the people, places, objects, and things I stumble upon in my quest to lead a life well-lived in the outdoors. Unlike the terrible run-on sentence I just made you read, Five Frames stories are short and to the point.
