Ski resorts take a leap in business

Utah ski resorts should beat last year's sales of lift tickets by 5 percent to 8 percent and perhaps more before the season winds down in mid-April, an industry group says.

"I would say we're going to do 3.5 million or 3.6 million skier visits this year," said Kip Pitou, president of Ski Utah.
"We're going to be up in all categories."

The number of out-of-state visitors to Utah's slopes is expected to show a jump because of poorer snow conditions over the winter in Washington state, Idaho and Montana.

The boost comes on top of last season's performance, and suggests Utah is reaping a boost from publicity of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Utah logged 3.38 million skier days last winter, which was up 7 percent from 3.14 million the year before.

"We're coming off a pretty strong season last year, our best year ever. Because of that, people tend to book vacations and locals tend to buy season passes," Pitou said.

Ski Utah collects confidential figures from the 13 independently operated resorts in Utah, releasing only the industrywide totals.

Snowbird resort is on track to top last year's skier traffic by at least 15 percent and "it would take a shocking turn of events for us not to have an all-time record," Snowbird spokesman Dave Fields said.

Utah resorts were blessed by early and heavy snowfall last November and record skier turnouts over the Christmas holidays, Presidents Day weekend and this Easter weekend, when the World Freestyle Championships was moved to Park City from Bogus Basin near Boise, Idaho, which didn't have enough snow.

Utah's lodging industry also is doing well. In Park City, home of The Canyons, Deer Valley and Park City Mountain resorts, lodging is on pace for a third-straight record year. Numbers so far are up almost 7 percent from last season, said Mark Bennett of the Park City Chamber/Bureau.

"This is the perfect storm in terms of ski attendance with the combination of snow, increased marketing efforts and the possibility that low snow in other parts of country helped us out," Ski Utah spokesman Nathan Rafferty said.

Alta ski area on Saturday was reporting an almost-unheard snow base of 183 inches -- more than 15 feet of packed snow under skiers' feet.

That compared to a 61-inch base at Vail and about the same at Aspen Mountain in Colorado. Some of California's Sierra range resorts had as much or more seasonal snowfall than Utah, but winter storms largely bypassed Washington state and Idaho, turning some slopes there brown.

Utah's Solitude ski area, which started counting its snowfall early last October, reported Saturday it had received 604 inches for the season -- more than 50 feet.

That's more snow than the Wasatch Mountains have seen since 1994-95, when Alta reported a season total of 745 inches. These and other Cottonwood Canyons resorts average about 500 inches a winter.

Source: This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1
Paul Foy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS