A booming year for local ski areas

SNOQUALMIE PASS — Kirkland real-estate agent Matt Stapleton dropped his kids off at school Friday morning and headed for the slopes at The Summit at Snoqualmie's Alpental ski area.

He glided to a halt at the top of Debbie's Gold, a picturesque ski run bordered by evergreens, their boughs heavy with fresh snow.

"I've had some of the best powder days I've ever had," Stapleton said of this year's season. "It's totally stellar — it's been awesome everywhere."

Everywhere in the Pacific Northwest, that is.

In Europe, French and Swiss ski operators are struggling to keep their slopes covered, while in northern Italy, organizers of this week's World Cup races are using helicopters to dump man-made snow on mountaintops, according to the BBC World News. Closer to home, East Coast ski runs, along with those in Montana and Utah, are unusually bare.

But here, the wild winter weather that wreaked havoc on roads and power lines over the past 2 ½ months has brought heavier-than-normal snowfall to the region's mountains, translating into a windfall for area ski resorts.

"The Pacific Northwest is essentially the center of the skiing and snowboarding universe right now," said Gwyn Howat, a spokeswoman for the Mount Baker Ski Area, the fourth-largest resort in Washington behind Crystal Mountain, The Summit at Snoqualmie and Stevens Pass.

"Usually when we have good conditions, there's snow everywhere else, too," she said. "But this year, we have extremely good conditions and it's only marginal conditions in other places, so people are making the extra effort to come to the Pacific Northwest."

Olympic medalists and professional skiers from California, Colorado, Sweden and Switzerland are among those who've "been chasing the storms and the powder snow," Howat said.

She said the storms already have dumped 450 inches of snow at Mount Baker, which gets an average of 645 inches in an entire season. This week, a team of Swedish ski designers will be at Mount Baker to test a new product line because, she said, "they have no snow in Europe."

At Crystal Mountain, there has been a noticeable surge in out-of-state visitors, said Tiana Enger, the resort's sales and marketing director. "Most definitely, 110 percent, this has been our year," she said. "We've had skiers flying in from all over the country to be here because everywhere else in the country — places like Lake Tahoe, Utah and Montana — they're skiing on man-made snow. The East Coast is practically in a heat wave."

The resort's hotel has been booked solid every weekend, with a 70 percent occupancy rate midweek — double the usual midweek bookings, Enger said. And a one-day record for food and beverage sales that was set last year has already been broken three times this season, she said.

During a normal season, 350 inches of snow fall on Crystal Mountain. So far this season, 292 inches have fallen.

"We're only 58 inches from our annual average and it's only mid-January," Enger said. "Years like this, we've got to smile and realize how lucky we are because some years, these types of conditions are only dreams."

The winter of 2004-05 was one of the worst ski seasons in recent memory, with so little snow that area resorts were forced to close early.

"I'm trying to forget that year, to tell the truth," said John Gifford, general manager at Stevens Pass.

Last season, he said, ranked as the fourth best season in the resort's history. It might move down the list by spring — more skiers have ridden the Stevens Pass slopes than at this time last year, Gifford said.

That's also true at The Summit at Snoqualmie where, as of two weeks ago, skier visits were up 17 percent over last year — an impressive figure given that the resort lost power for four days during recent windstorms, spokesman Jon Pretty said. The Summit averages 500,000 skier visits and 435 inches of snow each season, he said. So far, 271 inches have fallen.

"If the temperatures stay good, if we keep getting snow and if people keep visiting," this season will definitely rank in the top 10 seasons of all time, Pretty said.

Down the hill, local ski shops have also been doing brisk business. At the Alpine Hut in Seattle, co-owner Kyle Fisher said December sales were the highest of any month since his father opened the store more than 35 years ago.

Alex McDonald, who works at Seattle Ski and Snowboard in Shoreline, said the store has already sold out of many of its powder-ski models. "It's been an exceptional year," he said. "Everyone in the world has been wanting our snow."

Seattle Times staff reporter Melissa Allison contributed to this report.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com