Sparse snow in nearly all regions of the country got the U.S. ski industry off to one of its poorest starts in years. And although the weather appeared to be turning in late January in some parts of the country, catching up will be all but impossible.

Nearly all regions were down through the first half of the season, some drastically. At Bridger Bowl, Mont., skier visits were down more than 50 percent through January. Visits were off 30 percent at Okemo, Vt., and 10.65 percent in Colorado. At Lake Tahoe, no snow fell in December for the first time in more than a century. Through mid-January, the seven resorts there managed a collective 80 trails open. A snowstorm that dumped up to six feet of snow tripled trail counts to 276 by month’s end. But making up the lost first half will be more than difficult.


The Hole in the Powder Donut
Out west, snow fell mainly along the coast and Canadian border, hitting some resorts like Jackson and Grand Targhee, Wyo., and Big Sky, Mont., and completely missing others only a few miles away, like Bridger Bowl. “We’re the hole in the powder donut,” says Doug Wales, marketing director at Bridger Bowl.

Even when a big storm finally did hit the resort in late January, the power went out, shutting the mountain down. “We had to send 3,000 people home,” Wales says. “We were pretty chagrined.”

Through January, Bridger recorded 42,000 visits, compared to 88,000 last year, and revenues were down “a chunk below that,” Wales says, since the resort started charging full price only during the last week of January.

Utah, the self-described “home of the greatest snow on earth,” was reduced by the drought to talking about snowmaking. “We don’t usually promote our snowmaking capacity,” admits Jessica Kunzer, director of communication at Ski Utah. “But December and January were very different from the traditional Utah winter.” After a four-foot snowstorm at the end of January, Alta’s base was up to 70 inches, compared to 153 inches a year ago.

Visits were also down statewide, but thanks to snowmaking, not drastically, Kunzer says. “Deer Valley actually sold out a couple of times over Christmas.”

Snow totals and visits were also down in Colorado—snow about 50 percent, and visits nearly 11 percent. Vail was unable to open any Back Bowls until January 19, the latest opening in 30 years.

And if there’s one thing about bad news, it’s that it spreads. “We’ve had to fight misperception and all the snow drought stories as much as anything,” says Jeff Hanle PR director at Aspen, pointing out that even with 50 percent less snow, Aspen still had four mountains, 30 lifts and 4,000 acres open.


Busting the Snowmaking Budget
The snow drought was even worse in the Northeast. A couple of 10-inch coastal storms helped lift Maine to an “average” December and January, says Greg Sweetser, executive director of Ski Maine. “We’re down,” he says, compared to last year. “But we’ve had worse starts.”

And the snowmaking bills for this freeze and thaw winter will be huge. “We’re way over budget for snowmaking,” admits Bonnie MacPherson, PR director at Okemo. Thanks to the machine-made stuff, however, Okemo had 101 out of 119 trails open by the end of January, and business was back to near normal. Overall, though, visits were down 30 percent for the season.

Over at Bolton Valley, Vt., the area had two out of 70 trails open on December 21. Vermont resorts, as a whole, had less than 20 percent of their terrain open, all on machine-made snow. Bolton and the state generally were back to near normal trail counts and business levels by the end of January, “but we’re nowhere near last year or our budget,” says Josh Arneson, director of sales and marketing at Bolton.

Scott Brandi, president of Ski Areas of N.Y., noticed an interesting, if unscientific, correlation between trail counts and skier visits: The amount of terrain open was inversely related to business volume. “If a ski area was 30 percent open, business was down about 70 percent,” Brandy explains. Eighty percent open, 20 percent down. “It’s not scientific, but it seemed to work out that way,” Brandi says.

Areas with big snowmaking operations—Hunter, Windham, Holiday Valley, Whiteface—did relatively well. For many, though, it was one step forward (freeze), two steps back (thaw).


More Like Normal
For the Midwest and southeast, the freeze-thaw cycle that marked the first half of the season was a return to normal, after two seasons of abnormal (for them) snowfall. “We’re used to freeze and thaw,” says Chris Bates, GM at Cataloochee, N.C., where numbers were running about five percent off last year’s record. “It’s 44 degrees right now, and by tonight we’ll be making snow. We’ve been 100 percent open since November 12.” At Cataloochee, 100 percent open is 50 acres.

In the Midwest, where the scale is also smaller, the season to date has also been good, thanks to the artificial variety of snowflakes.


Getting the Message Out
If ski resorts cannot control the weather, they can, at least, thanks to the Internet, control the messaging. “We harnessed the power of social media to counter all the misperceptions,” Hanle says. Aspen sent crews out on the hill every day to video themselves skiing and having fun in the snow, put the images on its website, and e-mailed and twittered and Facebooked them to contacts.

Carl Ribaudo, executive director at Ski Lake Tahoe, says social media channels enable resorts to cut through the clutter and communicate directly and transparently with skiers. “We can let them know that even though they did not receive snow in their backyards, there is still skiing going on,” he says.

Bridger set up 10 webcams to show actual conditions, and ran videos and live weather forecasts on its website. “We can tell from looking at our web stats that people are keeping tabs on us, just waiting for that first big snowfall,” Wales says.

Many resorts also used social media to move guests with last-minute deals and discounts. “The trend on deals was already happening with social networking,” Maine’s Sweetser notes. “The big thing this season is that even the smallest areas were doing it.”

Bolton Valley partnered with four local retailers to sell 250 $29 lift tickets at each location. Bolton promoted the “pop up” sales only on its website. “We sold out each location,” Arneson says. “We had lines out the door. We wanted to lock people in the rest of the season.”

Evan Reece, cofounder of Liftopia, the Internet lift ticket discount site, says the poor season has helped resorts appreciate the value of advance purchase. “Advance purchase is good in both good and bad snow years,” he says. “But just throwing discounts out there can be a really bad move for resorts in a year like this. The key is to come up with strategies to help insulate resorts against bad weather without locking them into an undesirable situation.” He says the number of Liftopia-participating resorts has increased from 150 to 200 this season.

Ski areas are also harnessing traditional media. In response to the poor start, the New York state tourism office in early February stepped in with an unplanned $250,000 print and radio ad campaign to promote the state’s ski industry.

“Areas are doing their best to get the word out that they are open and conditions are good,” Brandi says. “Social media plays a great up-to-the-minute role in that. But we really need this media buy, too.”

In one of the more unusual marketing campaigns, Bridger Bowl enlisted its skiers to market the resort’s $69 four-night, four-day package aimed at out-of-town friends and families of locals. “We have such a high percentage of skiers in this community,” Wales says. “We want them to build off their social networks to communicate to their friends and families these great packages.”

In a year like this, the unusual has become the norm.