Mild weather causes dip in ski pass sales

Author: Tom Brant

Mild winter weather this season has taken a toll on the College Snow Bowl's ticket sales, including sales of student season passes, which are down 20 percent since last year, said Peter Mackey, the Snow Bowl general manager.

So far, an average snow cover of 23 inches is present at the ski area, too little to open the runs that do not have snow making machines, and little enough to keep some skiers and snowboarders away, Mackey said. Contributing to the decline in ticket sales was last year's mild winter, which also brought below-average snowfall.

"People look at the snow conditions from last year and this year and that influences their decision on whether or not to buy passes this year," Mackey said.

The Snow Bowl normally sells around 650 season passes to students of the College, roughly half of which are bought before the Bowl opens for the season. Sales of these discounted student passes and even regular-day tickets are down by as much as 20 percent, while sales of full-price passes remain about the same as last year, according to Mackey.

In addition to keeping non-snowmaking trails closed for lack of snow, trails that have snowmaking machines have taken longer to open this season because of mild temperatures in December and January.

"Last year we had good snowmaking early, but this year the snowmaking weather was really sporadic," Mackey said. "Temperature and humidity are both needed for good snowmaking. People figure if it's 32 degrees, you can make snow, but that's not the case."

Under normal conditions, the Bowl only makes snow if the temperature dips below 28 degrees. At the beginning of January, snowmaking ground to a halt because of extraordinarily high temperatures, which reached 62 degrees on Jan. 6.

On Jan. 8, the Bowl was forced to close completely because of a steady rain. When it opened the next day with two inches of new snow, Mackey sent an e-mail to the College community imploring staff and students to "hop on the bus to the Bowl, pick up your pass and take a few runs."

Widening and other improvements were completed on the Ross and Allen trails last summer in order to increase their capacity.

"The trail work we did this summer makes Ross and Allen able to absorb the traffic that they get," Mackey said.

But in spite of these improvements, both of the newly expanded trails were empty on many days this season.

As of Feb. 12, only six of the Bowl's 15 trails were open. For the Bowl to open trails with no snowmaking, like Voter, the snow cover must be at least six to eight inches. Last week, most of those runs had less than the required amount. With so little snow, not only is the skiing unenjoyable, but it is also unsafe, according to Mackey.

"The first thing I look at is safety," he said.

Some students have expressed dissapointerd in the snow conditions and the number of runs currently open.

"I was hoping for more runs to be open," said Hannah Lincoln '10. "But there's not much they can do if the snow isn't there."