Well Seasoned
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
Most people think the Olympics really made Park City take off,” says Mertens. “But the town was well on its way long before then. What really changed Park City was Deer Valley. That resort changed the living criteria here from a quiet, mountain community to a booming second home market. The whole complexion of the town changed. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just simply my observation,” states Mertens. And in the 30 years Mertens has lived and owned businesses in Utah, he has indeed observed quite a bit.
Mertens first became acquainted with Park City in the spring of 1969. He was working in the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point history department and was asked to chaperone a “Spring Break to Utah” trip for the university ski club. After a few days of skiing Little Cottonwood Canyon, he and a few others decided to head over the Wasatch and check out the recently-opened Treasure Mountain Resort ski area (now Park City Mountain Resort). “It was love at first sight,” Mertens recalls. “By the time I got back on the bus to Wisconsin, I had a job lined up with Jim Carr to manage the bar at the Prospector Lodge the next winter.” (The Prospector Lodge was where Grappa restaurant now operates.)
As spring turned to summer back in the Midwest, Mertens’ Park City puppy love waned, and he took a job as a bartender at a Wisconsin Dells golf course. One afternoon, however, his infatuation was renewed when a Treasure Mountain Resort ski instructor happened to wander into the bar. “We spent the afternoon talking skiing. After that, I couldn’t wait for the snow to fly and to get back to Utah,” Mertens recounts.
Mertens held up his end of the bargain with Jim Carr and started slinging cocktails at the Prospector Lodge the following fall. Come February, however, when they started measuring snow in feet versus inches, Mertens left the bar to load chairs at Park West (now The Canyons). And so began Mertens’ long career habit of doing what he loves, relying on his instincts, and logging more ski days in a single winter than most people do in a lifetime.
Ski patroller, river guide, gear rep and grocer are just a few of the job titles Mertens has held over the years. In 1978, he launched what was probably his most well-known, personally defining endeavor — the Mountain Savior, a tiny shop located mid-mountain at Park City Ski Area that, despite its moniker, had nothing to do with religion. “When I went into the bank to get the loan to open Mountain Savior, the loan officer said to me, ‘I hope this store has no reflection on the deity.’”
At the 10-foot-square Mountain Savior log cabin, Mertens sold everything from candy bars and lip balm to neck warmers and gloves for 23 consecutive winter seasons. Located at the top of the Motherlode lift for the first 15 years and then at the top of Prospector chairlift (now called Silverlode) for eight years, 90 percent of the Mountain Savior’s business transpired through the store’s ski-up window.
“The Mountain Savior was a very valuable experience for what I did later on. I learned the ins-and-outs of retail and, because I was operating on resort property, the importance of negotiation and being a good partner,” he says. Many a stretch-pants-and-sunglasses-wearing tourist caught in a Wasatch snowstorm quickly came to appreciate the little store’s unusual name.
In 1984, Mertens met Nanci Allison, who soon became his partner both in business and in life. Working together over the years, the two have expanded their mini-empire exponentially: in 1985, they opened Destination Sports, a ski rental shop at the base of Park City Ski Area and a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort; in 1990, they purchased Dinosaur River Expeditions, running river trips in southern Utah on the Green and Yampa rivers and in Flaming Gorge; in 1992, they opened a second Destination Sports location at the bottom of Park City’s Main Street; in 1996, they expanded river guiding operations locally to the Weber River; and in 2004, the two became restaurateurs with the opening of the Dinosaur Brew Haus in Vernal. The secret to Mertens’ success? “We’ve always expanded from within,” he says. “And we’ve always lived pretty simply and continued to reinvest most of what we make into our businesses.”
One of the biggest challenges Mertens says he’s had to deal with from the early days to today is managing the highs and lows of Park City’s fickle seasonal economy. “There is really no retail business to speak of in Park City in the summer, even now. And the rent has to be paid year-round,” he says. Mertens wonders how others open and operate businesses amid the town’s skyrocketing real estate market. “Mega corporations own most of the buildings in town now, making it hard to be a normal person and have the capital to exist,” he says.
But for all the ways Park City has changed in the more than three decades Mertens has called the area home, he still believes it’s one of the best places just about anywhere to live and do business. “Park City is still a beautiful place. And city planners have done a fantastic job making sure it stays that way. It’s easy for me to get caught up in the way things used to be. What I keep reminding myself of is that I can’t concentrate on the old days. I need to be in the here and now. And when I look around, it’s a pretty great place to be.”
Freelance writer Melissa Fields' first job in Utah was working for one of Tim Mertens' competitors, Bahnhof Sport.
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