Mt. Elysium

March 18, 2018 10:12 AM

The Guardian reports on the purchase of Powder Mountain, Utah and its transformation into "a utopian club for the millennial elite." According to its founders, "all entrepreneurs in their 30s," Powder Mountain "is becoming a mecca for altruistically minded members of the global elite." The goal of the project is to "be a beacon of inspiration and a light in the world."

Powder Mountain, Utah is a small ski mountain and attached community near Eden, north of Salt Lake City. From 2008 to 2014, a group of entrepreneurs best known for running Summit -- "an exclusive gathering described by insiders as a 'Davos for millenials'" that requires "psychographic" testing for admission --" put together a deal to buy the mountain and turn it into "an exclusive, socially conscious community."

The founders "bristle at the idea that they’re trying to build a high-altitude utopia for plutocrats, but then casually refer to a segment of their clientele as 'the billionaire set' – and don’t hesitate to mention that their mountain happens to be located between towns named Eden and Paradise."

Investors include the likes of Richard Branson, Tim Ferriss, and other prominent business, tech and entertainment figures.

posted by snuffleupagus (65 comments total)

Uhg it sounds like the Yellowstone Club but like a cult.
posted by Grandysaur at 10:15 AM on March 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

I don't see how this can work without Quincy Jones; they need to build a crib for his usage
posted by thelonius at 10:21 AM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

oh lol they have a book club:

Summit Book Club
Monday, March 19, 2018
7:00 PM 8:00 PM
Soho House (map)
The NYC chapter of the Global Summit Book Club hosts a monthly gathering to review and share insights and opinions on a selected piece. If you cannot join us in person, participate and join the conversation in our Summit Book Club Facebook Group!

This month's book is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
posted by halation at 10:24 AM on March 18, 2018 [45 favorites]

For a bunch of putative humanistic atheists, this type really digs the City on The Hill vibe. I guess it’s easier to move cities than fix the one you’re in, the latter option would be too disruptive, after all.
posted by johnnydummkopf at 10:25 AM on March 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

500 new houses at a minimum of $400,000 each is a lot of money available for altruism elsewhere and doesn't involve sticking a bunch of houses in an undeveloped and unsustainably remote location.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 10:29 AM on March 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Because, "To be a beacon of inspiration and a light in the world." sounded better than, "Yet another self-aggrandizing, ego-stroking, exclusive sand box for the rich kids."
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:31 AM on March 18, 2018 [45 favorites]

I guess it’s easier to move cities than fix the one you’re in

It is, but then you have to hire a maid to clean your house, and a tutor to teach your kid, and they need to live somewhere, and then they need to buy groceries, so you get a Trader Joe's, and then their employees have to live somewhere, and pretty soon you end up with homeless people camping in front of the Tesla store again.
posted by spacewrench at 10:31 AM on March 18, 2018 [73 favorites]

Fyre Festival Mountain
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:46 AM on March 18, 2018 [36 favorites]

It always tickles me how wealthy elites so blithely assume they are, bien sûr, inspirations to the rest of humanity.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:47 AM on March 18, 2018 [35 favorites]

The moral of this story is that "elites" are always mediocre. We get fooled because there's the occasional really smart one, but for the most part the folks who want to live in special-wecial communities (or "safe spaces") leading the world from afar while someone else does their laundry are not what you'd call society's finest minds.
posted by Frowner at 10:54 AM on March 18, 2018 [48 favorites]

Not to be pejorative as I'm sure it's quite a nice ski area but it's all blue and green lines on the trail map compared to ski bum paradise Alta which entirely black diamond symbols. I actually don't know what that means.
posted by sammyo at 11:03 AM on March 18, 2018

Blue as their blood, green as their money.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:07 AM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

So one good avalanche and we're rid of them?
posted by kokaku at 11:15 AM on March 18, 2018 [12 favorites]

It is, but then you have to hire a maid to clean your house, and a tutor to teach your kid, and they need to live somewhere, and then they need to buy groceries, so you get a Trader Joe's, and then their employees have to live somewhere, and pretty soon you end up with homeless people camping in front of the Tesla store again.

Surely that's what the robots and drones are for.
posted by Pryde at 11:31 AM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Not to be pejorative as I'm sure it's quite a nice ski area but it's all blue and green lines on the trail map compared to ski bum paradise Alta which entirely black diamond symbols. I actually don't know what that means.

There's actually a good amount of expert terrain -- black/double black diamonds are mostly dashed to show that they're ungroomed powder/mogul runs. They are also mostly short face runs, easier to see on a high-res map.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:35 AM on March 18, 2018

It’s all fine and dandy until Matt Damon defeats Agent Kruger and hacks the mainframe code so that the poors are all given Elysian citizenship.
posted by darkstar at 11:40 AM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Requires "psychographic" testing for admission, you say?

Shall we assume it’s effectively an IQ test plus a question about income, and to be admitted you must come below a threshold for the former and above a threshold for the latter?
posted by Sys Rq at 12:04 PM on March 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

I'm just sorry J.G. Ballard isn't here to see this.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:08 PM on March 18, 2018 [22 favorites]

Investors include the likes of Richard Branson, Tim Ferriss, and other prominent business, tech and entertainment figures.

I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time picturing Tim Ferriss, the guy who got famous explaining to people how they could exploit cheap labor in other countries in order to not work themselves, in any group of people who describe themselves as altruistic.
posted by Sequence at 12:17 PM on March 18, 2018 [25 favorites]

On the bright side, they're not taking an existing cool thing and making it worse, so maybe if we offer them a yearly in-flight magazine fluff piece as tribute they'll just leave the rest of society well enough alone.
posted by duffell at 12:33 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

There is nothing utopian about an exclusive enclave for rich people, what the fuck.
posted by emjaybee at 12:41 PM on March 18, 2018 [11 favorites]

Surely that's what the robots and drones are for.

Psh, as if somebody's going to make a robot to camp out in front of the Tesla store. Please.
posted by spacewrench at 12:44 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

... their mountain happens to be located between towns named Eden and Paradise.

I grew up just over Ogden Pass from Eden and Paradise. The valley's beautiful, certainly, but those towns are... optimistically named.

Powder Mountain used to be the second-cheapest place to ski.
posted by gurple at 1:05 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Don't these people play video games? You see the beautiful plutocrat community in the first hour of the game, to set up the inevitable apocalypse brought about by its hubris.
posted by zompist at 1:09 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

"None of the architecture should express taste..." pretty much nails it.
posted by ethansr at 1:13 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Powder Mountain. You will never find a more affable hive of elitists and douchebaggery.
posted by BigBrooklyn at 1:19 PM on March 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

Don't these people play video games? You see the beautiful plutocrat community in the first hour of the game, to set up the inevitable apocalypse brought about by its hubris.

I thought this sounded like a BioShock game. Do they have a lighthouse?
posted by Servo5678 at 1:30 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

literally every time i scroll past this post i start hearing 'powder mountaa-aa-aain!' in my head in the Charlie The Unicorn sidekick voices
posted by halation at 1:40 PM on March 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

I have some plasmids that will confer high altitude resistance, we could use them as a basis for a new barter system.
posted by benzenedream at 1:43 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I bet the world has rarely seen a higher concentration of tit ends.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:53 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

What awful, awful people. Beyond the expected idiocy and self-regard and mind-boggling arrogance ("Get this, I make words with my mouth to waiters and Uber drivers and common people!"), the thing that is really enraging about these people is their feeble, mewling fear that they aren't very nice. It's not enough that they lucked into obscene amounts of money and power -- they have this pathetic neediness! They want to be assured that they are good and virtuous and that people adore them. But this is not paired with any serious self-appraisal, and certainly not with any serious effort toward contributing toward a better society. Instead, it's an excuse for more self-indulgence dressed up in the raiment of self-searching. To these people, living with integrity is just another Veblen Good. Conscience is a commodity, and being altruistic is nothing to feeling like you are altruistic.

I see nothing in this article to indicate that they are any better than the 80's cokebros they disdain. At least an 80's cokebro had no illusions about his overpowering self-interest. And I am totally unsurprised that Ivanka Trump was one of the early members. She would fit right in.

If you wanted to update 'Are We the Baddies' for these dolts, it would end with the Nazis assuaging their doubts by, like, asking a POW how their day was going.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 1:54 PM on March 18, 2018 [25 favorites]

I see nothing in this article to indicate that they are any better than the 80's cokebros they disdain.


I mean, it is called Powder Mountain.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:08 PM on March 18, 2018 [12 favorites]

The Effect of Altitude on Cognitive Performance and Mood States

My friends who built their dream house at 8000 ft (I didn't ask how much) sold it after six months; they complained of "fuzzy heads" and thought it was persistent oxygen lack. They are back close to sea level and don't appear to have lost too much money on the adventure.

I didn't ask them about changes in pooping. Not because I am polite but because it didn't occur to me. I will definitely ask though the next time I see them.
posted by bukvich at 2:47 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

On the other hand, it would be convenient to have them all in one place
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:00 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

I'm sort of hoping a polar vortex puts 50-80 feet of snow on their (inevitable) New Years Eve party. May they welcome in the New Year with a real Donner Party.
posted by Marky at 3:09 PM on March 18, 2018

"One of the first structures we actually had built on the mountain is a nest made of 100% natural materials, no nails, woven together in a tree," says Summit's community development leader, Natalie Spilger. "It allows you to stumble upon it in a way that makes you think, 'How can this be possible?'
A nest in a tree - how can this be possible?
posted by unliteral at 3:22 PM on March 18, 2018 [12 favorites]

> On the bright side, they're not taking an existing cool thing and making it worse,

Er yeah, no. The first thing I thought when I read this was "Oh, no--what are they going to to Powder Mountain!" Very remote, low ticket prices, relatively small crowds is how I remember it.

It's in a very remote, beautiful, and relatively pristine area of the Wasatch Mountains. They keep saying something about "between Paradise and Eden" But Paradise is like 1.5 hours drive away and in a completely different valley, while Eden, the closest town, is a solid 20 minutes drive and on the other side of the mountain.

"Exclusive haven for filthy rich tech bro jackasses" sounds to me like pretty much the opposite of what Powder Mountain used to be. YMMV.
posted by flug at 4:22 PM on March 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

My friends who built their dream house at 8000 ft (I didn't ask how much) sold it after six months; they complained of "fuzzy heads" and thought it was persistent oxygen lack.

I think people's ability to tolerate high altitude varies quite a lot. I've heard there are super-fit, experienced climbers who go on their first Himalayan mountain trip- and find out, nope, you aren't going up that high, no matter what you may think about it.
posted by thelonius at 5:44 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

...and the reason there's so little construction evident after five years is because it's all underground, and the "test wells" are all just rock core samples for the Boring Company to evaluate before drilling the hyperloop tunnel to Denver Airport.

Am I doing this right?
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:05 PM on March 18, 2018

what Powder Mountain used to be

previously, on askme: we like snow
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:08 PM on March 18, 2018

When I hitch a ride in Chawla’s SUV, he tells me how he came to invest in Powder Mountain. He had just been on a disappointing trip to Verbier, a resort in the Swiss Alps where the food was “not that progressive”. Utah, he says, made for a refreshing change. “I bumped into 30 of my friends. I didn’t have to do anything. The food was amazing,” he says. “There was a moment when they served coconut water.” Coconut water was the very thing he’d been craving in Switzerland. At that moment, he thought to himself, “These guys just get me.”

AHHHHHHHHH
posted by materialgirl at 6:57 PM on March 18, 2018 [17 favorites]

Be a beacon.
posted by tilde at 7:08 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

"One of the first structures we actually had built on the mountain is a nest made of 100% natural materials, no nails, woven together in a tree," says Summit's community development leader, Natalie Spilger. "It allows you to stumble upon it in a way that makes you think, 'How can this be possible?'

I've been thinking about this piece off and on all afternoon, trying to figure out why this type of development seems so unappealing. Like, if you said to me, "Frowner, don't you wish you were part of a Russian oligarch family and had a beautiful townhouse in London," I'd be all "no, I do not wish that, Sam I am", but part of me would be like "....a beautiful townhouse in London [sob]" whereas if you said to me, "Frowner, don't you wish you got in on the ground floor at Facebook so you could live here", there would be no longing for the experience at all.

And I think the zany nest sums up why - a place that is so controlled, so structured to the exact wishes of its inhabitants that you have to pre-build the serendipity doesn't seem worth living in. And that's what seems so weird and mediocre about these tech people to me - this mania for control and faux novelty. A place that is new-built to the exact specifications of one small homogeneous group of people ("but we're not! Some of us prefer coconut water, others enjoy Ready Player One, we're all very diverse and unpredictable")...that's kind of a dead place.

Like, perhaps ones goes to Switzerland to, I dunno, drink whatever Switzerland-specific thing they drink there? You can get coconut water at home. Hell, I can get coconut water at home.

With all of these tech people, you feel like the death drive is very strong in them - that the ultimate state of the tech utopia is actually to be dead, because then you don't have to ever risk dealing with anything that isn't exactly what you ordered. Like that "do a fatal scan your brain, get reincarnated later maybe" start-up that someone posted about last week - the point of the start-up is clearly not the reincarnation but the death. You put your brain away all neat and tidy in storage, and then never have to worry about it again.
posted by Frowner at 7:46 PM on March 18, 2018 [31 favorites]

"Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come."

Just so! The poet is not longing to be the Emperor.

The bit of "One of the first structures we actually had built on the mountain is a nest made of 100% natural materials, no nails, woven together in a tree," that kills me is that they had it built instead of building it themselves.
posted by clew at 7:56 PM on March 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

I think people's ability to tolerate high altitude varies quite a lot.

My husband tried to live in the high desert and said he was sleeping 12-14 hours a day and was still exhausted all the time. He met a dude who lived there who had to be on supplementary oxygen at that altitude due to a hereditary form of anemia common in people of Mediterranean descent.

Anyhoo these people are terrible and I'm glad they're all concentrating themselves somewhere else, far from me.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:59 PM on March 18, 2018

They surely aren't going to live there. This is a place to visit a couple times a year.
posted by cell divide at 8:11 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

what's the likelihood that this is a fallout shelter for the rich?
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:23 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Coconut water was the very thing he’d been craving in Switzerland. At that moment, he thought to himself, “These guys just get me.”

We eat this one first
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:35 PM on March 18, 2018 [17 favorites]

I can walk around the corner right now, at 12:11 am on a Sunday night/Monday morning, and get coconut water. What the hell is these people's problem?
posted by praemunire at 9:11 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

They don't get the concept of a "grocery store"? Sounds like a place you send the help to to get supplies...
posted by Windopaene at 9:30 PM on March 18, 2018

ffs
posted by juiceCake at 9:57 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Man, at least the old money families these guys hate put their summer home off in Nantucket or Long Island and were culturally trained not to make a big fuss about it. Because you don't need to brag if you're secure that you've "got it."

It's as if these techbros are terrified of being rich! So deeply anxious that they will be judged for their vast wealth and thus influence that they're like "uhh... yeah but I'm using my $$ to buy a non-gaudy house, see, and it's not unfounded wealth either! I'm an ideas man, see, not only was my wealth from my world-changing app idea but I'm using this big brain of mine nowadays to sit and ponder how to make the world a better place! And I'm thinking alongside other smarty-pants founders because, oh no, I'm not one of those selfish types who stows away on my gated property tending to my own endless comfort. Don't you see, friend, look at this good collective we've built!
posted by hexaflexagon at 10:09 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Those events acquired a reputation as booze cruises for white, male tech bros, so a few years ago Summit decided it was time for a rebrand. They introduced cheaper tickets for women to improve the gender ratio, and abandoned the Caribbean for a more down-to-earth location: Los Angeles

Mmmm.

I tell Rosenthal that I’ve met many people in America who work as hard as him and his friends – harder, in fact – but struggle to make ends meet. He acknowledges that he’s benefited from considerable advantage, but insists we now live in an era in which “the internet is the great equaliser”. “What are you doing to create the utility for yourself? Are you introducing people so they can collaborate?” he says. Struggling Americans, he adds, might want to “host a dinner. Invite 10 strangers. See what happens.”

The blindness to privilege is par for the course, what I really love is that this guy thinks he invented networking.
posted by mrmurbles at 10:41 PM on March 18, 2018 [18 favorites]

When I hitch a ride in Chawla’s SUV, he tells me how he came to invest in Powder Mountain. He had just been on a disappointing trip to Verbier, a resort in the Swiss Alps where the food was “not that progressive”. Utah, he says, made for a refreshing change. “I bumped into 30 of my friends. I didn’t have to do anything. The food was amazing,” he says. “There was a moment when they served coconut water.” Coconut water was the very thing he’d been craving in Switzerland. At that moment, he thought to himself, “These guys just get me.”

Just to be clear, it's not doxxing when they just say stuff like this, right?
posted by Madame Defarge at 11:13 PM on March 18, 2018

a nest made of 100% natural materials, no nails

Yeah, nests are famously full of fucking nails. What the fuck?
posted by Dysk at 3:08 AM on March 19, 2018 [9 favorites]

Oh to live on,
Powder Mountain
With the barkers
And entitled baboons.

You can't be average
On Powder Mountain
If your poor they'll
Get you leaving there real soon.
posted by parki at 4:48 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

Eden, Utah. Population: 600 (2010 census). 95.8% White 1% African American.
Paradise, Utah. Population 759 (2000 census). 98.55% White. 0% African American...
posted by ojemine at 5:56 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

I actually ski at Powder Mountain quite a bit. To Summit Groups credit, they have done little to change the great locals vibe that has always made Pow Mow such a cool place. That said, they do have their own private clubhouses that keeps them sequestered from the locals. So, for now, everyone coexists amicably.
posted by trbrts at 7:58 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Surely that's what the robots and drones are for.

You know, that's a really patronizing way to refer to the hired help...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 10:31 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

> On the bright side, they're not taking an existing cool thing and making it worse,

All I can think of when I see this:

John Hammond:
Don't worry, I'm not making the same mistakes again.

Dr. Ian Malcolm:
No, you're making all new ones.
posted by Badgermann at 1:32 PM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think my “favorite” part was when the tech millionaire felt ashamed talking to the humanitarian, so he made an app to tell other people to donate their money to charity.
posted by Monochrome at 6:15 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

The Founding of the [Galt’s] Gulch, via Conservapedia:

Midas Mulligan did not leave his bank penniless. He converted all his holdings into gold (how he obtained it, the novel never reveals), food, and livestock. He moved this to his landholdings in the Uncompaghre Valley, where he now planned to retire permanently.

How Midas Mulligan cut off all means of access to the valley except for the northern road, and transported a stockpile of seed and several herds of livestock to the valley, all in secret, the novel never says. Mulligan says that he built a house in the valley the day that he decided to quit. As he later explained, he wanted "never again to look in the face of a looter."

The likely scenario depends on John Galt recruiting more than just the first five recruits that he named to Dagny Taggart later. (See above.) Logically, Galt would contract with Mulligan to cut off the southern approach (the Million Dollar Highway), camouflage the northern road, camouflage the valley from the air, and provide electric power, running water, and water treatment. Mulligan would pay Galt a lump sum, and Galt would hire the strikers he had thus far recruited to do the work.

John Galt's camouflage solution was a screen of heat rays and reflectors designed to project a false image of a rock-strewn valley five miles distant, plus a smaller version designed to hide the northern road. Galt also built a powerhouse to provide electric power for these screens, and for Midas' house and any other house that a man might care to build in the valley. He also built a water pump and reservoir system. John Galt took great pains to keep his electrostatic motor secret: even though he never expected that anyone would ever set foot in the valley who was not a part of his strike (an expectation that would prove moot later on), he kept his invention, and the power installation, locked down. He erected a blockhouse of granite, about half the size of a railroad freight car, and installed a special sound lock in the one and only door. This door would open only when someone repeated, slowly and with an inflection that would indicate understanding and wholehearted belief, the Oath of the Strike that John Galt had written. He carved this oath on the transom over the front door. It read thus:

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

In fact, in June 2011, John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjöld, Hugh Akston, William Hastings, and Richard Halley all built houses in the valley. They intended using those houses in annual visits every June. (William Hastings would use his house one more time, in 2012. He died shortly after he returned to his home on the outside.)

Imagine the homeowner association rules. I wonder who reviews and approves new home plans?
posted by cenoxo at 7:36 PM on March 19, 2018

This is one of the least self-aware things I’ve ever read. It’s like a parody. Please let it be a parody.
posted by Salamander at 8:23 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

trbrts, I remember when it was Park West...had many a good snowboard run down the "Park West pipeline"...
posted by gottabefunky at 1:13 PM on March 20, 2018

Midas Mulligan did not leave
I kinda miss MidasMulligan.
posted by unliteral at 2:26 PM on March 20, 2018