Alta lodge owner as constant as the mountain his resort is on

ALTA — Things don't change much around here, and sitting in front of me is Exhibit A.

Bill Levitt, owner for the past 50 years of the Alta Lodge — the oldest hotel in America's second oldest ski town — is getting ready for ski season No. 51 by making sure the front desk staff is on the telephone to upcoming guests, letting them know the current snow conditions, which can be summed up in one word: "lousy."

If they'd like to cancel, that would be fine.

"It's the right thing to do," says Bill, who has been running the lodge on that philosophy since he bought the place in 1959.

A native New Yorker who was born in Brooklyn, Levitt might never have discovered Alta, and in turn the Alta Lodge, if a similar courtesy hadn't been extended to him.

The year was 1954, Levitt was a successful documentary filmmaker in New York, and while on a business trip he had put on his first pair of skis at a resort in Vermont known as Big Bromley. The sport intrigued him enough to want to try it again. For a proper introduction to real skiing, he was advised, he should go "Out West."

He and his wife made reservations for the opening of the next ski season — about this time of year — for Aspen. But days before they were to fly to Colorado the hotel called and gave them the Aspen snow report: "lousy."

"You should go to Alta. They have snow," he was told.

"Alta? Where's that?" Bill asked.

"It's in Utah."

Remembers Levitt, "Of course, being a wise guy, I said, 'Where's Utah?' "

But he came to Alta, he skied with, was taught by and became friends with Alf Engen and Junior Bounous, and that was that. He was hooked.

Five years later, he quit his job as a filmmaker, bid New York goodbye forever and moved to Alta to ski, soak up the rare but clear oxygen at 8,600 feet and run the lodge.

He'd acquired the property from a businessman named Jay Laughlin, who the previous summer, out of the blue, had asked Levitt while on a hike through Alta's wildflowers, "Would you like to buy the lodge?"

Levitt surprised himself by how quickly he said, "OK."

Their conversation about the purchase price was equally brief.

Laughlin named a price and Levitt said, "OK."

He chuckles at the thought of what happened next.