Tahoe ski leader calls it a career
A luminary of California’s ski industry is retiring from his post as leader of Heavenly Mountain Resort in South Lake Tahoe.
Tom Fortune has helped lead three of Tahoe’s premier ski areas in Heavenly, Kirkwood and Northstar — all owned by Vail Resorts — since 2010. After 45 years in the industry, he will retire with the conclusion of Heavenly’s ski season in June, according to a Monday news release from Vail.
“This decision was not one made lightly, but I am ready to start a new adventure,” Fortune said in the news release, which didn’t specify what would come next for him.
Fortune has been Heavenly’s chief operating officer and vice president since 2022 but occupied various other leadership roles for the past 14 years. He also chairs Ski California, the state ski area association, and has sat on the board of the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority.
Fortune’s Tahoe tenure has been defined by industry highs and lows.
He helped steward Tahoe ski areas through a sudden pandemic shutdown in 2020 that has had lasting effects on ski area operations. He managed Heavenly and Kirkwood through last year’s banner winter when Tahoe was buried in snow for months.
Fortune also helped oversee Cal Fire’s major firefighting response to the 2021 Caldor Fire, which consumed hundreds of thousands of acres of the Sierra’s western flanks, severely damaged the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski area and threatened to burn into both Kirkwood and Heavenly. The agency established its base camp for that conflagration, which served 5,000 responders, in Heavenly’s parking lot.
“I’ve seen it all,” Fortune told the Chronicle last winter, seated behind his office desk at Heavenly. “I say that, and now something weird will happen.”
For that article, Fortune outlined his hopes and aspirations for Heavenly and for Tahoe’s ski community but also acknowledged the existential challenges to the ski industry posed by climate change.
“Over the course of my 44 years, winter used to be really consistent,” Fortune said at the time. “Now we’re having to learn to deal in extremes all year long. Technology will allow us to move along, but I don’t believe climate change is going away. It’s real, and it’s kind of scary.”
In Monday’s news release, Fortune said, “I am forever grateful to the amazing people I have had the honor of working with over the last 45 years. I have learned and grown, and my success is not mine alone, but shared with everyone I’ve ever crossed paths with.”
Fortune will be replaced by Shaydar Edelmann, who served recently as vice president of mountain operations at Park City Mountain in Utah and has 25 years of industry experience, according to Vail.