Warm Welcome Awaits Cold and Wet Visitor to Area

The great white winter of 1997-98 is a thing of the past. El Nino has run its course and La Nina, by contrast a cool-water oceanic event, is expected to bring warmer and drier weather to the southern half of the state.

How do they feel about this up north?

“That’s really too bad for the people down there,” said Monica Bandows, spokeswoman for Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, where more than four feet of snow have already fallen and more is expected this weekend. “But we’re all kind of like farmers. You take it when you get it, and you go with whatever you get.”

That may be true, said Brad Wilson, director of marketing for the New Mountain High in Wrightwood, “but we’re all snow farmers now and are able to produce our own snow. In the past, we were all dirt farmers and had to wait for rain--now we can produce our own product.”

Nevertheless, Wilson and other Southland resort operators are keeping an eye to the north and hoping that any of a series of storms lined up in the Pacific make an extended stop in the San Gabriel or San Bernardino mountains.

The one that drenched Los Angeles on Tuesday produced only drizzle in the San Gabriels and never made it to the San Bernardinos, instead veering back toward the coast before moving south. And the storm due later today isn’t expected to be a strong one.

To make matters worse, temperatures until the past couple of days have for the most part been too warm to cultivate much in the way of artificial snow.

Mountain High, Snow Summit, Big Bear Mountain and Snow Valley are all open--but on a limited basis and with conditions that are anything but ideal.

“I guess we’re all a little spoiled because of El Nino,” Wilson said. “But we don’t really need El Nino back. We just need some cold temperatures so we can make more snow and then the people will be back.”

HIGH TIMES

El Nino may be history, but its effects are lingering like snow in the treetops. California resorts logged a record 7.3 million skier visits last season, resulting in record or near-record attendance for some.

“The absolute grand slam home run was hit at Mountain High,” said Bob Roberts, executive director of the California Ski Industry Assn., which represents 35 of the state’s 36 resorts. “They went from the economic doldrums to 425,000 skier visits last season.”

That was second only to Snow Summit in Big Bear--which logged a record 550,000 skier visits--and it was also a record for a Wrightwood resort with roots that go back more than 60 years.

Indeed, the Los Angeles-based investment group that purchased Mountain High from an Orange County businessman in 1997 couldn’t have had better timing. Oak Tree Capital Management quickly spent more than $3 million fixing up what had become a dilapidated, antiquated two-mountain (East and West) ski area and then let Mother Nature do the rest.

She cooperated by keeping skiers and snowboarders knee-deep in powder from November through much of May. The result was one of the largest single-year growths in ski-resort history.

An additional $3 million was invested this past summer and the New Mountain High, as it has appropriately been renamed, now has vastly improved snow-making capabilities, a few new trails, a new terrain park and a second competition halfpipe.

The new management also built a separate snowboard rental facility and purchased more than 1,000 new boards, and instituted an electronic ticketing system that enables skiers and boarders to pay by the hour or by the run, if they so choose.

“We were going to make these improvements regardless of how well last season played out for us,” Wilson said. “But having a little coin in the pocket because of how well everything went certainly helps.”

SNOWBALL EFFECT

The great white winter, along with recent changes in ownership (and subsequent capital investments) at a few of the more popular resorts, helped bring about summertime improvements that totaled nearly $100 million statewide.

Elsewhere in the Southland, notable changes include a new high-speed quad chair, two new terrain parks, a new paint job and a new name for Bear Mountain--it is now Big Bear Mountain--a new freestyle park and an upgraded base area that includes the paving of the auxiliary parking lot at nearby Snow Summit, and an expanded deck at Snow Valley in Running Springs.

At Mammoth Mountain, which received a substantial financial boost when Intrawest Corp. bought into the ski area in 1996, it would take a volcanic eruption to put a damper on things.

Last winter, Mammoth received 540 inches, or 45 feet, of snow, the third most in the 45-year history of the Eastern Sierra resort. Nearly $40 million has been spent on improvements over a two-year period that began last year.

For this season, two new high-speed quads and a new upper gondola were added. The Panorama Gondola--which is expected to open Dec. 12 and run from mid-mountain to the 11,053-foot summit in nearly half the time of the current system--is part of a two-year project to replace the old gondolas.

One of the new chairs, the Gold Rush Express, loads near the base of Stump Alley and unloads at the saddle between Lincoln Mountain and the top of Chair 5, enabling quicker access to such runs as Solitude, Spook and Lower Dry Creek. The other quad chair replaces the popular, but slow and old, Chair 4.

Also new to Mammoth, scheduled to open Dec. 19, is the Mill Cafe at the base of Stump Alley Express and Gold Rush Express, serving California cuisine on a slopeside deck that can accommodate 200 people.

In what management sees as a need to diversify, Mammoth Mountain also purchased the Tamarack Lodge Resort and Cross-Country Ski Center at Twin Lakes and hopes to develop it into “one of North America’s premier cross-country ski resorts,” and took over what is now called Mammoth Snowmobile Adventures, located at Mammoth Mountain Inn and featuring guided or solo trips on more than 75 miles of trails.

Farther up U.S. 395, in the Tahoe area, a thick layer of snow is not all that’s new. Several resorts have added or upgraded facilities and services, but the most exciting news is on the south shore at Heavenly Ski Resort, which received a tremendous boost in capital when it was purchased by American Skiing Co. last fall, and an equally tremendous boost from the heavens, which had dumped 48 feet of snow on the slopes by season’s end.

Heavenly spent $10 million on improvements during the summer. They include not only two new high-speed lifts, expanded snow-making capabilities and new grooming equipment, but a large day-care facility and a 20% increase of its ski and snowboard rental inventory.

“Most of the resorts up here have day-care facilities, so we’re a little behind in that regard,” Bandows says, “but as far as I know, we’re now the only one that will accept infants.”

Especially if their names are El Nino.