Snowball Express

Struggling emotionally and financially in a dead-end job as an accounting clerk at a New York City insurance company, John Baxter chucks the job and the New York life and uproots his family--wife Sue and teenage children Chris and Richard Baxter, all figuratively kicking and screaming--when he inherits what seems to be the lucrative 25-room Grand Imperial Hotel in the mountains of Silver Hill, Colorado. What they find upon arrival in Silver Hill in the middle of winter is a boarded-up, dilapidated building that last made good money during the mining era. They also find that they've inherited--officially or not--some of the town's misfits. They've spent all their money on legal fees and moving, so have no cash to make even the most basic repairs. But when John learns that he not only owns the building but much of the adjacent mountainside, he believes the answer to their problems is to turn the hotel into a ski lodge and develop the mountain into a ski run. Having no experience whatsoever with winter alpine recreation, John gets into one misadventure after another. A further hurdle is Martin Ridgeway, the local banker, who tries to thwart John at every turn in his goal to purchase the hotel. The unknown reason why Ridgeway wants the hotel so badly might be the answer to all John's problems.