The problem is not the mountain side ski hills, it’s access to the flow of rich people. Ski resorts 2 hours from the Bozeman airport struggle because that’s too inconvenient.
The ski towns that suffer from these problems are a small minority of ski resorts that meet the criteria of:
- town actually right next to a ski resort (many ski resorts don’t have a convenient town attached)
- airport with commercial flights to major hubs within 45 min to an hour drive at most
But, as you say, a lot of destination ski resorts don't even really have an associated town at all or they have a somewhat distributed sprawl of related properties and they're inconvenient to get to. Even most of the Colorado resorts aren't especially quick to get to from commercial flights. And if you don't have a destination resort (or other) you just have a small rural town that may not have much in the way of jobs in the first place.
While there have actually been more small ski areas created since than I would have expected, it looks as if Deer Valley is the newest major resort from the early 80s--and that's in a town that already existed and already had an associated major ski area.
> the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts
was meant as a strawman.
The main environmental constraint I’ve seen is rain in December wiping out all the manufactured snow killing the holiday season. (I am talking about New England so YMMV)
Almost impossible given environmental constraints. (Whether one agrees or disagrees.) Even expanding existing resorts is tough. And it's not clear the economics are there given demographics even leaving aside any climate change factors.
ADDED: More rural towns with very limited facilities may be possible given Starlink, etc. But they're not going to be world-class ski resorts or what most people think of as the associated mountain towns.