TROUBLE AT THE SUMMIT

Four founders bought a $40 million ski mountain in Utah to build a utopia for tech's elite. It didn't work out quite as planned.

- LILA MACLELLAN

THE THEME WAS NARNIA meets Walden meets 1920s speakeasy at the 2012 Summit Series Basecamp conference. The rapper Q-Tip and DJ Jazzy Jeff played a set; the president of Georgia made a speech; rescued mountain lions surprised guests at a nature talk; and the illusionist David Blaine roamed the halls of the Lake Tahoe resort, randomly delighting attendees with his tricks.

Just four years after a group of idealistic entrepreneurs in their early twenties started Summit Series, it had grown into a phenomenon: an invite-only multi-day conference with an eye-popping guest list of CEOs, founders, wellness gurus, philanthropists, and celebrities who came for the intense workshops, heady talks, and legendary parties at stunning vacation destinations. At an annual Summit Series conference or a "Summit at Sea" cruise, one might find oneself in a meditation session with Jeff Bezos, learning about indigenous peoples' rights from Harrison Ford, or petting puppies with A$AP Rocky.

The four young men who created Summit SeriesElliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz-would usually be in the mix, hobnobbing with guests in the craft cocktail bar hidden behind a broom closet or practicing lucid dreaming in the geodesic dome. But at Lake Tahoe in 2012 they had to sit out the fun, they recall in Make No Small Plans, a book about the conference series that they published last year. Instead they were holed up in a windowless room at the resort, working behind the scenes to charter a 737 jet to Utah.

The morning after the conference ended, they ushered 60 of the 800 Basecamp attendees onto the plane for a last-minute all-expenses-paid mystery trip. A fleet of 30 rental cars was waiting in Salt Lake City to deliver the still-baffled guests to a hastily constructed yurt at the top of a mountain in the town of Eden, Utah-Powder Mountain.