Snowless Resorts Could Use a Lift

0

A drive up the mountain quickly shows how bleak the L.A. area’s ski resorts are this season.

At Mount Baldy, L.A.’s closest snow playground, empty lifts swing in the wind. The parking lot is vacant and only a few wisps of snow cling to the slopes.

Ron Ellingson, president of Mt. Baldy Ski Lifts Inc., said the mountain has been closed most weekdays this dry season and the lifts haven’t operated much at all.

Revenue is down about 50 percent at his resort above Claremont. The good news: Profits are down only slightly because he has trimmed costs and concentrated on the tubing market; the tubing hill and the beginner’s ski slope have man-made snow. In tubing, people ride down snow-covered slopes on inflated tire tubes.

“It has been a rough year for ski areas, but the tubing saved us,” Ellingson said. “We’ve had a pretty good year financially because our overhead is much less.”

In a year with heavier snow, Mount Baldy might have 130 employees on the mountain; this year the payroll is about 50. The resort also saves on fuel, water and equipment by only putting man-made snow on two slopes.

Further east, Chris Riddle, vice president of marketing at Big Bear Mountain Resorts, owner of both the Snow Summit and Bear Mountain sites, said his lift ticket sales are running 10 percent behind normal. The Big Bear resorts have run at near full operation with the help of man-made snow.

“Our November and December were very good and January was disappointing,” Riddle said. “But we know we’ll have dry years in Southern California and that’s why we have such expansive snow-making systems. The only reason we are down is that we are fighting the perception that there’s no snow in California.”

The Big Bear resorts, about a mile and a half apart, have also cut payroll. The resorts project their estimated number of customers for the next few days, then call in only as many people as necessary.

Riddle wouldn’t put a number on the staffing cuts. At full capacity, both resorts combined employ about 1,800 people.

“Staffing is the one variable cost we can control, and we are looking at the hours of operation and not opening as many lifts on soft days,” he said.

Valerie Jaffee, owner of Jaffee & Associates, a ski resort consultancy in Dana Point, said Riddle has the right approach.

“The challenge is for management to be thinking and acting like managers,” she said. “If sales are down 10 or 20 percent, then they should shut down that same proportion of the mountain.”

At Mountain High Resort, west of Wrightwood on the Los Angeles side of the county line, the resort receives an average of 143 inches of snow in the winter; as of the end of January, it had about 36 inches, according to ski website OntheSnow.com.

The resort’s website reports a base of 12 inches of snow at the bottom of the slope. Staff at the resort did not respond to requests for comment. Mountain High is owned by private-equity group Oaktree Capital Management in downtown Los Angeles.

Farther away at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in the southern Sierra Nevadas, Chief Marketing Officer Howard Pickett said ticket sales were 23 percent below normal at the end of January. The resort has operated at partial capacity for much of the season.

Pickett blamed the lack of natural snow for the decreased sales. Even though resorts have enough man-made snow to cover the slopes, consumers don’t think about skiing until a storm brings it to the top of their minds.

“The core customer in Southern California is very induced by snowfall,” Pickett said. “When it’s 80 degrees in the valley, and after massive media coverage about the lack of snow, it’s hard to convince people to ski. In this market, these are impulse trips, and when there’s a snow dump alert, they come up and ski the weekend.”

A Mammoth spokeswoman said the snow base was 3.5 to 5 feet last week. Normally at this time of year, it’s 10 to 12 feet.

Discounted season

Pickett at Mammoth said he has discounted prices and featured a promotion where season pass holders can bring a friend for half price. They have also run promotions to fly people from L.A. airports to Mammoth for free.

Bear Mountain and Snow Summit have run many promotions, including half-price deals for season pass holders at competing resorts.

Ellingson at Mount Baldy has discounted his prices for tubing with campaigns on Groupon and Living Social.

Although the cost per person for tubing is $35, about half the price for a ski-lift ticket, tubing attracts families and larger groups than skiing, he said. Also, those families usually tube for about two hours, then eat at the resort’s restaurant before heading down the mountain. As a result, the turnover in customers is much higher because skiers usually stay the entire day.

If there’s any solace in it for the ski mountains, Jaffee believes resorts are faring better in this dry year than ski retailers, based on a simple cost comparison. She estimates it costs $700 to $1,000 to get fully outfitted for skiing with top gear, whereas a day’s lift ticket costs in the $50-$90 range.

“People will buy less ski clothing this year, and you’ll see more people on the slopes in Levi’s,” she said. “So I think this season the retailers will suffer more.”

No posts to display