Alive – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

OLYMPIC VALLEY, California – A crowd of skiers recently zigzagged down the slopes at Squaw Valley Ski Resort. Couples and families wandered through the resort’s village, which was decked out in golden Christmas lights and frosted with snow.

It looked like the beginning of a happy season. On closer inspection, however, it turned out to be anything but that.

The patios in the restaurant were almost empty when masked workers with lime green disinfectant sprayers on their backs were swept through. This was part of the $ 1 million Squaw Valley spent on disinfecting equipment and other security measures. Scanty groups waited in socially distant rows at the ski lifts. The resort felt “so dead,” said one skier, Sabrina Nottingham, in part because it kept ticket sales below 50 percent of the norm.

Squaw Valley, a marquee for winter sports enthusiasts, is one of many ski resorts across the country preparing for an unpredictable season. Resorts have been forced to rethink how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and with vaccines still rolling out, they have made a variety of changes in places like Aspen, Colorado. Park City, Utah; Taos Ski Valley, NM; and Killington, Vt. Many place visitor restrictions and require ticket reservations; New Mexico has limited resorts to 25 percent of capacity.

The resorts are also minimizing personal interactions by installing kiosks for ticket collection, creating space between people for ski lifts and gondolas, requiring masks, limiting the number of people on an elevator at one time, and closing down indoor dining in some places.

While the pandemic has dealt a severe blow to the entire travel industry, ski resorts could have a disproportionate impact this winter due to their short business window. The ski industry had already suffered a blow back in the spring when the pandemic broke out and many ski resorts were forced to close prematurely, resulting in $ 2 billion in losses and laying off or vacation days for thousands of employees, according to the National Ski Areas Association trade group . The industry recorded the lowest number of visits since the 2011/12 season at 51 million, the association said.

Now resorts like Squaw Valley are setting their expectations low for the new ski season.

“I don’t think anyone in the industry is aiming for the best year ever,” said Ron Cohen, president of Squaw Valley and neighboring Alpine Meadows, who laid off 2,000 seasonal workers in the spring. “We want to keep our businesses so that after the end of Covid we have the opportunity not to suffer so much damage that we may not be able to get up.”

Mike Pierce, a spokesman for Mount Rose Ski Tahoe, a resort in western Nevada, said the attitude was “just to maintain and survive the status quo.” He declined to provide financial data but said, “If we break even it will almost be counted as a success.”

Even before the pandemic, the ski industry tried to arouse interest in the sport. According to the National Ski Association, the number of skiers has stagnated over the past decade. Adrienne Isaac, a spokeswoman for the trade group, said the resorts had tried to make skiing and snowboarding more accessible to newbies but had come to terms with the perception that it was mostly aimed at the rich and white. Climate change continues to affect snowfall, which can result in shorter seasons.

How the ski resorts develop this winter will have a domino effect on the tax revenue of the state economy. In New Mexico, the shortened ski season last winter and this spring generated $ 41 million in taxes, but George Brooks, the executive director of the state ski association, said he expected no more than 40 percent of that number in the coming months .

Vail Resorts, the world’s largest ski company with 37 ski resorts around the world, including 34 in the U.S., reported in a December 10th call for profit that it lost $ 153 million from August to October, more than the loss of 106 , $ 5 million in the US same time a year ago. Rob Katz, managing director of Vail Resorts, said season pass sales rose about 20 percent, but he expects fewer visitors and less sales this winter than previous seasons.

At smaller resorts, the pain may not be as severe. Diamond Peak Ski Resort in Incline Village, Nevada announced that it was about $ 1 million ahead of projections after the spring shutdown. Mike Bandelin, the resort’s general manager, said smaller resorts often operate at a loss in the last few weeks of the season, so closing early actually saved money.

Many resorts said they still expected some die-hard skiers and powderhounds to show up this winter, along with locals and those who have moved to second homes nearby. At the Winter Park Resort west of Denver, a swarm of eager skiers crowded the lift lines this month’s opening weekend. The resort was quick to take action to allow more distance, said Jen Miller, a spokeswoman.

Updated

Apr. 24, 2020, 8:33 am ET

But the visitors who won’t come, said the ski resorts and other ski experts, are most likely casual skiers and those who travel from long distances.

“We’re going to lose the mom and pop who want to raise their kids,” said Mr. Brooks.

In Colorado, the Aspen Skiing Company, which operates four ski resorts, has had stable business since reopening Nov. 25, but will miss the 20 percent of its annual visitors from other countries, said a spokesman, Jeff Hanle. He said Aspen may also see fewer travelers out of state, especially if they live in places where they will need to isolate on their return.

“You have to be a pretty committed skier to say, ‘I’m going to ski and I know when I go home I’ll have to quarantine,” he said.

Even if the resorts make it through the winter, smaller businesses that rely on skiers to get into town – like restaurants, hotels, and retail stores – may not be as lucky.

At Stratton Mountain Resort in Stratton, Vt., An Irish pub called Mulligan’s has laid off half of its staff. Since visitors to Vermont, which sources 80 percent of its ski traffic from other states, must be quarantined for a week or two before they can go anywhere, Mulligan’s owner Tom Rose expects up to a 60 percent loss of his normal winter sales.

“We survived Hurricane Irene. Our sales took a real leap after September 11th. We made it through the great recession, ”said Rose. But “this pandemic is by far the worst.”

There are some bright spots. Backcountry skiing or ski touring – which often involve climbing remote, snow-capped mountain ranges – is booming. According to the NPD Group, backcountry equipment sales increased 76 percent from August to October compared to the same period last year.

“The Covid environment, which favors socially distant outdoor recreational activities, as well as the restrictions in place in the ski resorts have increased interest in ski touring this season,” said Eric Henderson, spokesman for Snowsports Industries America trade group.

Those who have The trips to the resorts said they were glad they made the effort. Recently in Squaw Valley, Ms. Nottingham, 21, who was visiting San Luis Obispo with fellow California State University students, said the experience “felt safer than going to a grocery store because everyone is everyone, even though the resort is quiet was covered up anyway. “

Squaw Valley, which opened in 1949 and hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics, has seen significant changes in recent years. In 2010 it was bought by a private equity group called KSL Capital Partners and merged with neighboring Alpine Meadows the following year. Together, the two resorts span 6,000 acres, most of them in the Lake Tahoe region, and have 42 lifts and more than 270 trails.

In August, Squaw Valley announced that it would change its name by 2021, as “Squaw” is considered a racist and sexist term for Native American women.

But nothing the resort has been through can match the chaos of the pandemic, Cohen said. While refusing to disclose the financials for Squaw and Alpine, he described the spring’s losses as “devastating” and said the resorts are “operating on lower profit margins” and generating weaker sales this winter.

The disruption became doubly apparent this month when a new stay at home order went into effect in the region, forcing resorts to cancel hotel stays and adding another wrinkle to potential visitors.

For ski resorts, the mantra right now is “stay alive and survive,” said Cohen.

The rooms of the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center at Indiana University are lined with identical shelves from wall to wall. Each shelf is filled with uniform frames and each frame with indistinguishable glass bottles.

However, the tens of thousands of fruit fly species in the vials are each very different. Some have eyes that fluoresce pink. Some will jump if you throw a red light on them. Some have short bodies and iridescent curly wings and look “like little ballet flats,” said Carol Sylvester, who helps with grooming. Each strain is also a unique research tool, and it has taken decades to introduce the traits that make them useful. If left unattended, the flies will die in a few weeks and destroy entire scientific disciplines.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, workers from different industries held the world together and took great personal risk to care for sick patients, maintain supply chains, and feed people. However, other important professions are less well known. Dozens of employees come to work at the Stock Center every day to serve the flies that support scientific research.

Small beetle, big impact

For most casual watchers, fruit flies are tiny dots with wings that hang near old bananas. Over the past century, researchers have turned the insect – known in science as Drosophila melanogaster – into something of a genetic switchboard. Biologists regularly develop new “fly strains” in which certain genes are switched on or off.

Studying these light mutants can show how these genes work – including in humans, as we share more than half of our genes with Drosophila. For example, researchers discovered what is now known as the hippopotamus gene – which helps regulate organ size in both fruit flies and vertebrates – after flies with a defect in them became unusually large and wrinkled. Further work with the gene has shown that such defects can contribute to the uncontrolled cell growth that leads to cancer in humans.

Other work with the flies has shed light on diseases from Alzheimer’s to Zika, taught scientists about decision making and circadian rhythms, and helped researchers win six Nobel Prizes. Over a century of optimizing fruit flies and cataloging the results has made Drosophila the best characterized animal model we have.

It’s a big part of a humble mistake. “When I try to tell people what I’m doing, the first thing they usually say is, ‘Why should you keep fruit flies alive? I’m trying to kill her! “Said Ms. Sylvester, who has been a Bloomington warehouse keeper since 2014.

When a couple of hitchhikers come to her house from the grocery store and their children rape her, she added, “Mom, you brought your coworkers home from work.”

The Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center is the only facility of its kind in the United States and the largest in the world. It is currently home to over 77,000 different types of fruit flies, most of which are in high demand. In 2019, the center shipped 204,672 fly vials to 49 laboratories States and 54 countries, said Annette Parks, one of the center’s five lead investigators.

It’s “one of the jewels we have in the community,” said Pamela Geyer, a University of Iowa stem cell biologist who has been ordering flies from the storage center for 30 years.

Other model organisms can be frozen for long-term storage in certain life stages. Laboratory freezers around the world hold mouse embryos and E. coli cultures. But fruit flies cannot go on ice. Taking care of the creatures means turning them over regularly: they are transferred from an old vial to a clean vial that has been supplied with plenty of food. Under quarantine with other members of their species, the flies mate and lay eggs that hatch, pupate and reproduce and continue the cycle.

“We have strains in our collection that have been continuously propagated this way since about 1909,” said Cale Whitworth, another senior investigator at the camp center, across generations and institutions. To keep the millions of Drosophila on their toes, the center employs 64 storekeepers plus a media preparer – think fly food cook – as well as a kitchen assistant and five dishwashers.

Don’t unfold

In the camp center, as everywhere, the first movements of the pandemic felt threatening. “I remember joking with people:” We are the people at the beginning of the dystopian novel, and we still don’t know what’s coming, “said Ms. Sylvester.

As the number of cases increased, Dr. Whitworth got a bag with a pillow and a toothbrush and imagined the worst. “I was in the ‘everyone is sick, last man on earth’ business,” he said. “How ‘How many flies can I fly in a period of 20 hours, sleep for four hours and keep turning the next day?'”

When Indiana University closed on March 15, the warehouse center remained open.

Kevin Gabbard, the fly food chef, made an emergency shop. Although they eat the same thing every day – a yeast puree made primarily from corn products – flies can be picky. Risking nothing, Mr Gabbard ordered two months of her favorite brands. “They think cornmeal is cornmeal,” he said. “But it’s not when it’s not right.”

The co-directors developed a more robust Hail Mary plan that would enable them, if necessary, to “keep most flies alive with just eight people,” said Dr. Whitworth. They also decided to stop all supplies and focus their energies on looking after flies.

On March 26th, the flies stopped leaving the building – and news of support came in almost immediately. “You are all amazing,” read an email. “The fly community is strong because of the phenomenal work you do.”

At around the same time, employees had a choice. They were considered essential workers and were allowed to come on campus. The university guaranteed them full pay even if they decided to stay home or an hour and a half to get in. (The center covers its costs through a combination of federal grants from the National Institutes of Health and its own income from sales of flies.)

The vast majority chose to keep working, said Dr. Whitworth – although suddenly the job was very different. The center is usually a very social place to work with birthday parties and group lunches. Working hours are usually flexible, a big selling point for employees, many of whom are parents, students, or have retired from full-time work.

Now people work in masks, often in separate rooms. Relocations in one of the buildings in the center were strictly planned to avoid overlap. “You can work alone for quite a while, maybe all day,” said Roxy Bertsch, who has been a warehouse keeper since 2018.

And for the first few weeks, the warehouse keepers – many of whom do additional duties like packing, shipping, and training – spent all of their time turning flies, which is monotonous and tough on the hands. “We just came in, fed flies and left,” said Ms. Bertsch.

But she kept going back. After her son may have been exposed to the coronavirus and she had to quarantine herself, she counted down the 14 days before she could return.

“There’s no way to keep me from work when I could be here,” she said.

Ms. Sylvester specializes in caring for flies whose mutations mean they will need additional DC. She also worked full time during the entire shutdown, borne by the care for her protégés. “Most of the time, I just love the flies and don’t want them to die,” she said. “I never thought I would love larvae so much.”

Back to the ship shape

In mid-May, the center began shipping inventory again. Dr. Parks relayed another series of messages, many of which were now relieved.

“Feels like Christmas,” tweeted a laboratory at Aarhus University in Denmark with a photo of a box of vials.

A message in the spring from Tony Parkes, a biologist at Nipissing University in Ontario, had praised those “who do their job with few awards, but on which everyone counts as a basic backbone”.

When Dr. Parkes’ laboratory paused, he spent some of his unexpected downtime thinking about the storage center. It is a balance, he said, that enables even small laboratories to answer big questions “without using large resources”.

Plus, researchers can literally share their discoveries with one another. “You don’t need to have your own library to access all of this information,” he said, since the storage center is “there whenever you want.”

The people who keep the center going are also thinking about it. “It means a lot to know that you are part of it,” said Ms. Bertsch.

But it increases the pressure. “We all feel this great weight in making sure the storage center is there for everyone,” said Dr. Whitworth.

The pandemic continues, of course, and further obstacles loom. Although the fall semester has passed without incident, cases are increasing in the region, increasing the potential for another shutdown. Post delays at home and abroad have led the center to point out that their customers are turning to private freight forwarders – flies die if they’re on the road too long.

Although they are no longer paid extra, they all keep coming back to work. And even if things change, Dr. Whitworth ready. “I never unpacked my bag,” he said. “It’s still in the closet.”