If car crazy California had a “drive-in” ski area, it would be Boreal Ridge, a success story sitting at the top of the Sierra Nevada. Six lanes of Interstate 80, a major highway link between Northern California and points east, are a scant 50 feet from Boreal’s 2,000-car paved parking lot that is full far more often than empty.
At night, the parking lot often resembles a used car lot selling recreational vehicles and motorhomes. For $5, drivers of the rigs can sleep overnight in the lot and be first in line when the chairlifts start moving at 9 a.m. The $5 is applicable to the cost of a lift ticket, lessons or rental equipment. It’s not unusual to see 150 RV’s and wheeled homes in the lot under the moon.
The $5 “overnight in the lot” plan is just one way that Boreal has capitalized on the freeway. I-80, according to Boreal General Manager Jay Price, provides “a tremendous convenience. Our convenience is a major key to our success. There isn’t a stop light between here and San Francisco and you can make it up here usually in about three hours.”
Although Boreal’s ridge is small by Sierra resort standards — only 600 feet of vertical — its pulling power is large as evidenced by the fact that it has made money every year since opening day in 1965.
Boreal, eight miles east of bustling Truckee, recorded 200,000 skier day visits during the 1977-78 season and grossed $2 million, excluding revenue generated by a concessionaire-operated restaurant and ski shop at the base.
Under a formula followed during the last five years, 25 percent of after-tax profits are paid into dividends that go to Price and the group of other investors who own stock in the corporation. The remaining profits are spent improving and expanding the ski area.
In 1978, Boreal increased the size of its modernistic day lodge by 50 percent to 35,000 square feet. The paved lot was expanded by 60,000 square feet. An additional 600 rental units were purchased to bring the stock up to 1,500 pairs of skis, bindings and poles. A $60,000 Thiokol grooming machine was acquired, the snowmaking system was expanded and all the groundwork for an Alpine Slide, slated for erection this June, was completed. All the improvements cost $1 million.
Three years ago, Boreal built a hotel-dormitory complex with 26 rooms in the hotel and 52 pillows in the dorms. Weekends are sold out through the season.
Price, president of the National Ski Areas Association (term expires in May), finds that constant improvement of Boreal is a must because it sits in a hotly competitive ski resort region. The Lake Tahoe basin lies 30 minutes away where skiers have their choice of mammoth Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, Northstar and several other areas, most of them with much more mountain to ski on than Boreal offers with its 20 or so slopes.
How does Boreal compete?
“Well,” explained Price, “for one thing we cater to buses coming in with groups. We give them special treatment and assign staff people full-time to look after their needs. We work out class times to fit their schedules. We just don’t tell them when ski classes are scheduled. If they want to have races, we set up races at places and times most convenient to them. We cater to mass skiing.”
“We tout Boreal as giving them an opportunity to do anything they want as long as it is not illegal, immoral, or fattening. That is our modus operandi.”
Skiers who don’t get their fill of excitement in the Tahoe Basin sometimes stop at Boreal on the way home for a couple of hours of night skiing. Open every night, Boreal boasts the largest night ski operation in the Sierra with two chairs serving slopes for beginning through advanced skiers.
Snow, in normal years, tumbles down on Donner Summit at the rate of 500 inches a year. Boreal’s problem often is too much snow, as was the case several years ago when there was 70 feet of snow at the top of the slopes at one time.
But the Sierra drought a couple of years back also struck Boreal, and Price was forced to install snowmaking. The system is capable of pumping out 131,000 cubic feet of snow per night.
Boreal’s current problem is keeping cross-country skiers from parking in its spacious lot. Many feel forced to do so because one of the most popular cross-country trails in the state starts right across the freeway from Boreal, and the state essentially provided no parking for the skiers who use its trail. Large signs have been posted in the Boreal lot to keep out the cross-country skiers. Those who park there anyway, and are caught, have their cars towed away.
Boreal doesn’t need to worry about overcrowded slopes, according to Price, who explained that when the parking lot is full, the longest lift line is usually 12 minutes. On busy weekends, some 4,000 skiers ski the ridge. Typical mid-week days draw about 1,000 skiers, Price’s cut-off point where he figures Boreal “can generate profitability.”
“Our facilities are so conceived and built that we can provide a total ski experience without using the entire plant. When times are tough, we can cut expenses by cutting out some parallel lifts. They are excess capacity so you can still ski the whole mountain. The rental shop is a conscious attempt to build in efficiency. It requires minimal staff to run.”
He regards Boreal as “an anomaly in the ski industry because in the last 20 years, you can count all the new resorts on one hand that weren’t real estate deals. We have no land sales.”
Price expects the profitability picture to brighten even further this summer when Boreal’s twin chute Alpine Slide takes visitors 3,000 feet down and around the slopes. Again it’ll be a case of the freeway bringing success to Boreal. Travelers will be able to glance out of their cars and see the thrill-seekers sliding down from the summit.
More than a few may say, “That looks like fun. Let’s try it.”
Ski Area Management Vital Statistics — Boreal Ridge, California
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Vertical Rise | 600 Ft. |
| Top Elevation | 7,800 Ft. |
| Double Chair | 7 |
| Snow Making Capacity | 4000 CFM, 20% coverage |
| Grooming Fleet | 6 snow cats, 1 Thiokol |
| Amount of Terrain | 200 acres |
| Lift Ticket Prices — Weekend Adult | $9 |
| Lift Ticket Prices — Weekend Junior | $5 |
| Lift Ticket Prices — Weekday Adult | $7 |
| Lift Ticket Prices — Weekday Junior | $4.50 |
| Season Pass Price (standard individual) | $130 |
| Number Full Time Employees | 30 |
| Number Seasonal Employees (not including ski school) | 150 |
| Number Full Time Instructors | 25 |
| Part Time | 75 |
| Miles of Track-Set Cross Country Trails | 0 |
| Facility | Area Owned | Concession |
|---|---|---|
| Ski School | x | |
| Ski Shop | x | |
| Rental Shop | x | |
| Restaurant | x | |
| Bar | x | |
| Nursery |
