From his office at Mountain High ski area in southern California, General Manager Karl Kapuscinski is following several trends, the first of which is a rapid transformation of the ski industry into a winter sports industry. Many areas—Mountain High included—are tapping into this trend by offering a variety of on-mountain alternatives to skiing and snowboarding.
This season, Mountain High made a bid for the burgeoning snowplay market by selling $10 tickets to a sledding/tubing hill with a capacity of about 300. “On an average weekend we’ll have 6,000 skiers here,” Kapuscinski said, “but thousands of people drive up to the area just to play in the snow by the roadside. We’re on track to do 300,000 skier visits this season, and could do a huge number in snowplayers if we had the parking and amenities in place to serve them.”
The snowplayers at Mountain High reflect another trend: immigration. They are primarily Hispanics, Mexicans, Asians and other new arrivals to this country, most of whom have never seen snow before. “They haven’t been exposed to the media trends that skiing and snowboarding are visible in,” Kapuscinski said. “But they do want to see snow.”
And they’ve been coming by the thousands, driving up from Los Angeles, clogging the access roads, building snowmen, sliding, starting snowball fights and wandering around the ski area. “There are days when you can’t see the snow because there are so many people on it,” Kapuscinski said. “It works great when we’re at two-thirds capacity. But when we’re at full skiing capacity, you hate to fill a parking spot for $10 compared to $40 [for a ski lift ticket].”
The influx of non-skiers has had other effects as well—some good, some not so good. Kapuscinski estimates that snowplayers now account for five to eight percent of the area’s restaurant and retail revenue, but they have also severely strained limited parking and put an added burden on ski patrol and terrain.
“What’s hard is when we don’t have enough natural snow to open the tubing hill,” Kapuscinski said. “Then they get on our manmade snow with their kids and cameras. They have no concept of where to slide. They’ll slide right through the middle of a lesson. It’s really a capacity issue—where to put them all.”
Whether sparked by immigration trends or other forces, there’s little doubt the snowplay market is on the rise at U.S. ski resorts.
This season, Vail opened a whole area dedicated to snowplayers in response to guest surveys asking for more night activities for youngsters. The new four-acre Adventure Ridge at the top of Eagle’s Nest is accessed by a new 12-passenger, high-speed gondola. The area is open from noon until 10 p.m., with several restaurant and bar options in the Eagle’s Nest main facility overlooking the park area, where most activities operate after dark under floodlights. Early attendance estimates are around 1,000 snowplayers a day, with traffic picking up after 4 p.m. when the gondola ride is free.
For $20—$15 for children—Adventure Ridge offers ice skating, a snowboard park and terrain garden, halfpipes, a snowshoe trail system, tubing and sledding. Snowshoe rental is extra, as is snowmobile touring.
“It’s been popular beyond our wildest expectations,” said Pat Peeples, public relations director. “We were originally aiming at the youth market, but it evolved into much, much more.”
“One of our motivations in opening the park was to diversify the vacation experience,” she said. “In so doing we also diversified our business experience.”
Other ski area managers reported they were also moving quickly to diversify on-snow activities. Ray Gardiner, vice chairman and CEO at Snowbird, Utah, said his area will open a luge track before the end of the winter. “The idea is to give people more things to do at the ski resort,” Gardiner said.
Following the introduction of a smash-hit tubing hill last winter at Spirit Mountain, Minn., management hopes to have a luge track up and running before this winter is over. “People come up here just for the tubing,” said marketing director Briana Schaub. “We fill up to capacity just about every weekend.”
The additional activities are part of the newly-established Blizzard Fun Park, which Spirit has begun marketing separately from the ski area. Two-hour tickets to the park cost $5 and include the use of a tube or luge. “Over the years, we got enough inquiries from non-skiers asking for something they could do to convince us to try it,” Schaub said. “Next year, we’re thinking of adding an additional tow and expanding the area even more.”
At Snowshoe, W.V., owner Intrawest is considering a number of on-snow alternatives while in the process of redrawing the master plan. Options on the drawing board include tubing, night skiing, ice skating and sledding.
“We’re on the brink of evolving into a whole lot of new things,” said Bill Hungate, marketing vice-president. “Some of the new sports are in response to skier surveys and some are just responding to trends in the industry.
“Ski areas in the future will have to offer more than plain old skiing and snowboarding,” he continued. “They have to offer more sports; be more all-encompassing, more flexible. That was one of the offshoots we brought back from last year’s NSAA convention.”
The new Winter Unlimited package at Waterville Valley, N.H., is both all-encompassing and flexible. A broad spectrum of activities is offered for one low price per day. Guests can combine skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing with lodging (no meals) and village amenities such as use of the sports center, fireworks, parties and other activities.
Waterville Marketing Director Debbie Moore said the new sports combo package has “gone over extremely well,” despite an erratic season in the Northeast. “People coming here are just thrilled to have all of these activities at their disposal,” she said. “I think it’s part of the whole adventure travel trend.”
