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Exploring the new winter economy

Chicago remains covered by snow, but ski areas have been tossing in the towel on the warm and snowless western winter.

Among the 20-some ski areas to close early are Sugar Bowl Resort, Sierra-at-Tahoe and Homewood, all in the Lake Tahoe area. Washington state’s Mt. Baker remains “temporarily suspended,” as it has been since March 8.

Squaw Valley, meanwhile, has begun pumping sales of its season passes for next winter with an unusual guarantee: “If you ski and ride less than five days next winter season, we’ll credit you for unused days on your next pass.”

The Sierra Nevada has received only one-third of the natural snowfall in this fourth and perhaps worst year of drought. In parts, snowpack measured just 13 percent of average.

Now, newspapers are conjecturing about life after skiing if, as climate models predict, rain replaces snow more frequently.

The trend has been ongoing since 1980, says Mike Anderson, climatologist at the California Department of Water Resources.

“We definitely have an expectation for warmer temperatures,” Anderson told the Sacramento Bee. “So years like this will definitely become more the norm.”

The somewhat trite response is that ski resorts have to expand their offerings year-round. Newspapers on both sides of the Sierra found plenty of people willing to talk about how magnificent mountain towns are during summer months.

The Bee pointed to investments in non-skiing infrastructure. Vail Resorts is investing in zip lines and other summer attractions at Heavenly,. Boreal Mountain Resort several years ago opened a 33,000-square-foot indoor recreation facility.

The Reno Gazette-Journal acknowledged that the warm temperatures and lack of snow might be part of normal climactic variability but suggested a shift from winter sports destinations to mountain sports destinations.

Actually, this began long ago. In the 1980s, snow hills scrapped the name “ski area” in favor of “resort.”

As for mountain towns, some have summer economies as vibrant as those in winter. In California, Truckee is near several ski areas but at the base of none. It has a larger summer draw than in winter, with shoulder seasons growing in length, reports Tony Lashbrook, the town manager.

In Colorado, sales tax revenues for the six non-skiing months in Telluride and Crested Butte surpass those of winter.

Vail has also become extremely busy in summer, and lodges are frequently full in July and August. But room rates? That’s another matter. About 70 percent of Vail’s sales tax revenues arrive during winter. People pay top dollar to slide down the mountain.

Vail Resorts doesn’t see this fundamentally changing. Speaking with Mountain Town News two years ago, Vail Resorts’ Blaise Carrig said the company does not expect summer to ever rival winter.

“Winter revenues are dramatically greater for our company, and they always will be,” said Carrig, the president of the company’s mountain division. “What we are hoping for is that we can grow our summer business to significantly reduce or eliminate the loss quarters (of summer and fall).”

 

New Mexico could have a wet spring

SANTA FE, N.M. – A recent storm dropped ample snowfall on both the Taos and Santa Fe ski areas. Might this auger a wet spring and summer, maybe even the wettest year on record?

That’s the hypothesis of Andrew Church, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. “Odds are in our favor,” he tells the Santa Fe New Mexican.

The pattern along the West Coast and in the Pacific Ocean hasn’t been matched since 1941, when New Mexico averaged 26.57 inches for the year, more than twice the normal precipitation.

 

Thawing temps at Aspen cause slides

ASPEN – Four nights last week, temperatures stayed above freezing in Aspen , wrecking the snowpack on the four local ski areas.

Avalanches, brought on by the heavy, water-saturated snowpack, ran down Aspen Mountain. Crews set off many bombs in an effort to control avalanches, reports the Aspen Daily News.

Jeff Hanle, spokesman for the Aspen Skiing Co., called it an “extraordinary weather pattern.”

 

Earth has warmest winter on record

BOULDER – It snowed hard in Boston this winter, but the big, world-wide picture was of record-breaking heat.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported that December through February collectively was the warmest on record around the globe.

December 2014 was the warmest on record, and both January and February were the second warmest on record.

NOAA says that record warmth was observed in the western United States, portions of central Siberia, and eastern Mongolia.

 

GoPro cameras document grizzlies

BANFF, Alberta – GoPro video cameras have been used for many applications, but this one may be new. As part of a $1 million study, the tiny cameras have been affixed to the front of Canadian Pacific locomotives chugging through the Canadian Rockies.

Trains have been the No.1 cause of grizzly bear deaths in Banff and Yoho national parks. Especially during spring and fall, the bears gravitate toward the railroad tracks. At least in some cases, they find corn spilled from passing trains. But they also find vegetation to browse.

Researchers tell the Rocky Mountain Outlook that the bears respond to trains in several ways. Some bears scamper as soon as they see trains approaching, while others leave the tracks at the last moment. Still others, when startled by the trains, begin to flee along the tracks, as if they could outrun the trains.

The same study had allowed researchers to create a much more detailed census of Banff’s 60 to 65 bears, including family trees. Bear 122 comes in for special attention, as the boar has fathered at least five young bruins.

Bear 122 is identified as Banff’s badass bear, at least in part because he killed and ate a black bear last year. He seems to have a range in excess of 2,500 square kilometers. This compares with the average home range for male grizzles in that part of Canada of 1,000 to 2,000 square kilometers. Females have ranges of 200 to 500 square kilometers.

 

Lab tests confirm date rape drug

PARK CITY, Utah – Lab tests have confirmed that two people overdosed on the drug GHB at a nightclub in Park City during the winter.

The cases were part of a string of a least five episodes of a similar nature at Park City’s largest nightclub, reports the Park Record.

Lt. Darwin Little of the Park City Police Department said police fear a fatality if use of GHB, also called the date-rape drug, continues.

 

Winter Park express could ride again

WINTER PARK – Will the past become the future? From 1940 - 2009, trains departed Denver’s Union Station every Saturday and Sunday morning, depositing skiers an hour and a half later at the foot of Winter Park’s slopes.

A generation or two of Denver residents learned to ski at Winter Park before Interstate 70 opened. But while the ski trains remained popular, they were ended in 2009 by Philip Anschutz, the owner, because of the cost of insurance.

Now, following a special resumption of train service in mid-March that drew 900 riders, hope remains that the service can become permanent once again.

What’s new is that Amtrak has gotten involved. For the trial run in March, Amtrak delivered trains from its storage yard in Chicago. Amtrak works closely with Union Pacific, which runs 18 to 24 freight trains over the tracks each day.

Steve Hurlbert, spokesman for Winter Park Resort, says discussion will begin in April about permanent resumption. Amtrak, he says, “is as enthusiastic about this as we are.”

– Allen Best

For more, go to mountaintownnews.net.