BY JULIAN DOUMIT, Assistant Sports Editor
As winter quarter enters full swing at Central, more and more people around campus, and the Northwest as a whole, continue to wonder: Where is the snow?
Ellensburg already had to go without its usual white Christmas, but the lack of powder is beginning to affect more than just disappointed holiday junkies.
As Patrick Crawford, content director for Onthesnow.com (a website which provides international snow reports) puts it, “All the ski resorts are struggling this year.”
To the dismay of skiers and snowboarders internationally, it has been a particularly dry year. From Lake Tahoe to British Columbia, resorts are reporting well-below-average powder, with the ones that remain open offering less than their usual available lifts.
In fact, one of the only three resorts in Washington state to offer all 10 of its lifts is currently the Stevens Pass resort, which up until last Sunday had been closed due to “heavy snow and traffic.” Either way, students who recently have decided to make the trip have reported a disappointing experience.
“Me and my roommates went last weekend, and it was horrible,” Brad Sweet, a business major at Central, said. “All that was there was some ice and hard packed snow. Not fun.”
The other nearby resorts are also struggling to keep up with demand. One of the closest, The Summit at Snoqualmie, has only four of its 25 lifts open due to the lack of fresh snow. Crystal and Mount Baker each have eight of their 10 lifts open. Even White Pass has a lift closure.
This comes as especially troubling news for a state that, according to SnowSports Industries, makes up over ten percent of the total snowboarders and skiers in the United States. Washington, along with Colorado, California and New York, is widely regarded by winter recreation athletes of all kinds as the home of some of the best slopes in the country.
If the winter athletes are mad, then the local businesses that serve them are furious. Area restaurants, rental shops and even gas stations say that their financial situations have been negatively affected by the lack of their usual seasonal customers.
The Last Resort, northwest of Ronald, reports numerous cancellations at both their motel and snowmobile rental shop, which according to an article by the Daily Record, has owner Don May struggling to make ends meet without shortening the hours of his employees.
Despite the general lack of fresh snow, the fact that there is any snow at all comes as welcoming news for an area that has been all but devoid of it, with the exception of a couple of chilly days.
That, coupled with the fact that temperatures are expected to drop steadily through the middle of January, provides some hope to the largely dissatisfied local population of snowboarders and skiers, as well as local businesses in the area.
People interested in winter recreation will have to settle for the few functioning resorts until more snow appears. Despite some local resorts still reporting ski lift and run closures, most of the nearby hot spots for winter sports remain open to some extent.
Most people aching to hit the slopes have resolved to wait it out until a worthwhile amount of fresh powder appears on more of the popular local slopes.
“It’s really not even worth it to go at this point,” Sweet said. “If I go, then I’ll wait until the experience is worth the price of a lift ticket.”
This is a sentiment largely agreed upon by the student population of Central. Seven out of 10 students, when asked whether or not it would be worth it to go skiing at the Snoqualmie pass (or any other nearby ski resort) answered no.
With lift ticket prices generally rising nationwide, skiers, snowboarders and tubers alike are looking to get more bang for their buck when it comes to making ski trips.
Some mountain resorts have begun looking for ways to encourage skiers to keep skiing by offering a variety of different deals.
Mt. Bachelor, for example, recently cut prices on season tickets to encourage winter recreation, even though lift tickets were raised as a result.
For now, it seems, businesses and winter recreation enthusiasts of all kinds will have to keep holding out, in the hopes that a large amount of fresh powder will soon grace mountain slopes. If not, then many popular ski destinations may have to resort to drastic measures to attract the skiers and snowboarders that are so necessary to keep their businesses alive.
