Some B.C. ski resorts carry on

While warm temperatures have decimated the snow pack at many of the Pacific Northwest's ski areas, low-profile Red Resort near Rossland, B.C., continues to operate 100 percent of its runs.

The ski area just 10 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border is one of the few in the region that has managed to weather the unseasonably high temperatures and rains that have turned ski areas into mud bowls.

"We count ourselves very lucky," Jim Greene, vice president at Red Resort, said Wednesday. "This business can be fickle."

On Wednesday, all 83 trails were open at Red Resort, and it had a 55-inch snow base.

That's not the case in Washington, where most downhill ski areas — including the Summit at Snoqualmie, Stevens Pass and Crystal were closed on Thursday. 49 Degrees North, just south of Red Resort, was open with 91 percent of its runs open. In British Columbia, Whistler/Blackcomb has suffered because of warm, wet weather although more lifts were open Thursday than in previous days.

In B.C.'s Okanagan area ski areas such as Big White were enjoying a forecast Thursday of more snow flurries and daytime highs below freezing. All its lifts were open Thursday. Farther north, Sun Peaks' forecast is for snow flurries on the weekend. In northern Idaho, Lookout Pass had 75 percent of its runs open, but Schweitzer Mountain was just 16 percent open and Silver Mountain near Kellog, Idaho, reopened Thursday with limited operations. Lisa Gerber, a spokeswoman for Schweitzer, located near Sandpoint and the largest resort in the Spokane area, estimated that skier visits so far this winter have been only 60 percent of normal.

The hill usually employs 600 people at full operation, but that number is also way down, Gerber said, although she could not estimate how many people were idled.

Schweitzer officials are placing hopes in an expected winter storm in early February, and the fact that March is often the month when the deepest snowpack is measured. The President's Day weekend, which is Feb. 19-21 this year, is also typically a big ski weekend.

"We're still banking on a season coming out of this," Gerber said. "This is the worst we've seen in 20 years."

Businesses that depend on skiers are suffering.

Ski shops in the Spokane area are already putting ski gear on sale and running advertisements, something they don't normally do until later in the season.

At Mount Spokane ski area, most of the hill's 200 workers are out of work until the mountain reopens.

It is a lucky location that allowed Red Resort, 200 miles north of Spokane, to remain an oasis of snow in this dismal ski landscape.

Greene said its location at the bottom of the Monashee Mountains tends to trap storms coming up from Washington state. One storm in early January dropped 24 inches of snow in 36 hours, he said.