Chacaltaya – Once Home to the Highest Elevation Skiing Worldwide
A member of the Merrill Lynch team, Keefe Gorman delivers knowledgeable financial advice about a variety of investment vehicles. Active with the United States Ski and Snowboard Association, Keefe Gorman has had the opportunity to travel and ski slopes across the mountainous regions of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia.
Bolivia is home to Chacaltaya, which for many years held distinction as the highest-elevation ski resort in the world. Built in the 1930s, the resort featured a glacier ski area summit at 17,785 feet, higher than Mt. Everest base camp. The rationale behind this was that it allowed for glacier skiing throughout the year, even during the November to March timeframe, when other seasonal slopes are closed to skiing. One highlight was a car engine-driven rope tow built in 1939 that enabled skiing and riding across 660 vertical feet.
With scientists starting to research the effects of global warming on the glacier in the 1990s, it was estimated that it was retreating at a rate that would make completely disappear by 2015. Unfortunately, this was a miscalculation, as glacial retreat accelerated to such an extent that the 18,000-year-old glacier completely disappeared in 2009.
A financial advisor and wealth manager with 25 years of experience in his field, Michael Keefe Gorman currently serves as Managing Director of Investments for Merrill Lynch Financial Services in Ithaca, New York. With an impressive background in his field, he laid the academic foundations for his career while an undergraduate at St. Lawrence University, where he pursued studies in economics and Spanish. The recipient of a Vilas Scholarship and a top-ranked Division I skier, Michael Keefe Gorman graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts and subsequently joined the United States Professional Ski Tour, spending more than a decade with this organization.
In 1987, Mr. Gorman joined the investment professionals at Merrill Lynch and soon cultivated a solid reputation as a wealth management advisor, in which capacity he serves the needs of corporations, families, and individuals of high net worth. Because of his outstanding performance, he earned selection to the Merrill Lynch Circle of Champions in 1995, an honor given to top Financial Advisors across the nation. A member of the Circle of Champions to this day, Mr. Gorman has since accumulated additional distinctions for his work, including mention in Registered Representative Magazine as one of the Top 50 brokers in the U.S., and multiple listings on Barron’s annual roster of Top 100 wealth advisors. Committed to the highest ethical and professional standards of the finance industry, Michael Keefe Gorman holds membership in the Financial Planning Association, along with designation as a Certified Financial Planner.
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Michael Keefe Gorman 