Business at Mountain High is on a downhill slope.
Even as other nearby ski resorts have claimed their best snow season in nearly five years, this one in Los Angeles County is struggling to pull itself out of a downward spiral caused by higher temperatures and a prolonged drought.
From an annual average of approximately 500,000 visits last decade, the resort has struggled to attract even half that in recent years, as light snowfall in the San Gabriel Mountains has driven skiers and snowboarders to powder-covered peaks farther north.
“That’s the price of having a ski resort in paradise,” said John McColly, chief marketing officer at Mountain High, which is about 80 miles by car northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Last month, the winter resort closed its lift, trails and restaurant as temperatures reached 90 degrees in Southern California. By month’s end, it had several hundred ski instructors, snowmakers and general employees waiting for a comeback call. And an early March snowfall was quickly threatened by sunny days, keeping the resort closed until at least the middle of the month.
“It would’ve been a humongous rebound had we had a February or March or April,” McColly said, noting that the resort had a strong start in December and January, but would likely see another dismal year.
In operation since 1937, Mountain High is one of the oldest ski resorts in the country. But in recent years it has rarely faced times as bad as this.
Record years
Still, Mountain High’s low snow accumulation is somewhat of an anomaly in a year when many resorts are celebrating an El Nino-fueled snowpack that has provided a much needed boost for the ski industry.
“When Mother Nature puts snow on you, you’re just a big white billboard,” said Clayton Shoemaker, marketing director for Big Bear Mountain Resort in Big Bear Lake.
“This is an exceptional year,” he said, adding that the resort could see nearly 700,000 visitors by season’s end.
In an email to the Business Journal, Lauren Burke, a spokeswoman for Mammoth Mountain, said the resort in Mammoth Lakes had also seen a return to “normal winter,” with more than 300 inches of snowfall this season.
Northstar California Resort, Squaw Valley Ski Resort and Heavenly Mountain Resort also reported all trails open as of last week.
“There are probably some resorts that’ll be reporting record years,” said Michael L. Reitzell, president of the California Ski Industry Association in Mill Valley. “Given the fact that we’ve had the past four seasons being more challenging, I think people really wanted to come out and enjoy this season and they’ve had the conditions to do that.”
As of this month, resorts in the California-Nevada area were expected to tally upward of 6 million visits from November to next month – a big bump from last year, when visits hit a record low of roughly 4.6 million visitors.
“The timing, it couldn’t be more perfect,” said Michael Berry, president of the Lakewood, Colo.-based National Skiers Association, who said the ski industry had not seen anything similar to the previous four seasons. “Right now it has been a huge benefit to the ski industry.”
Ski resorts are not the only ones to breathe a collective sigh of relief and have a dormant hope rekindled that traditional weather patterns will return.
“We’re a canary in the (coal mine) for California,” Berry said, adding that ski resorts are the first ones to benefit from a snowpack that could help mitigate the larger ramifications of a severe drought.
Alternative use
Still, the bout of dry seasons has spurred resorts to seek out alternative uses in a bid to offset warmer winters and a shorter ski season.
“You manage your human resources, you become very conservative when it comes to your expenditures, you schedule people appropriately, you just get very creative when it comes to managing your resources,” said Tina Fraynd, director of marketing at Snow Valley Mountain Resort, noting that the Running Springs resort had recently increased its focus on off-season activities, including mountain biking, zip lining and concerts.
“You have to look in the long term, we’ve got a lot of athletic people here so I think it makes sense for businesses to be looking in that direction,” she said.
Kevin Somes, general manager at Snow Valley and president of the Running Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, said that higher operating expenses, including labor, insurance, electricity and snow-making machines also meant there is a greater need to innovate.
Just as an anchor tenant brings in shoppers at the mall, he said, communities such as Running Springs depend on Snow Valley to attract business even in a slow season.
Fingers crossed
But even if Mountain High continues to control costs, build unpredictable weather patterns into its budgeting and plan more off-season activities, nothing can beat snow. On a recent afternoon, a message machine answered calls.
The recording said, “We are temporarily closed due to the warm weather, but expect to reopen somewhere around March 11 with new snow and new terrain features. So don’t put your gear away just yet. Typically, El Nino is a late-season phenomenon and we traditionally close in mid-April, so there’s still plenty of skiing and snowboarding left to be had.”
At press time, fingers were crossed at Mountain High that impending winter storms would bear enough snow to bring the mountainside back to life. If so, snow-making machines could potentially supplement Mother Nature’s gift.
That would mean skiers could once again stop at the resort’s Bullwheel Bar & Grill to eat hamburgers and trade tales from the slopes. And the ski lift would be carrying customers up the mountain.
“Every little bit (of snow) counts,” said McColly, who hopes the resort would be able to reopen its slopes for the last few weeks of the season.
