On a mid-December evening in Killington, Vt., Norwalk resident Lawrence Kaczmarek schussed down a slope lit by torches he and more than 80 other skiers carried to commemorate the resort”™s 50th anniversary.
A month later, ski clubs, stores and resorts report that their patrons are still carrying the torch for their favorite winter destinations, despite the rough patches exposed by the economic meltdown.
The Connecticut Ski Council held its annual Crystal Snowflake Ball in Southbury in November, and has scheduled its annual winter carnival for the first weekend in March at Okemo Mountain in Ludlow, Vt. A dozen local ski clubs are among the some 30 that belong to the Connecticut Ski Council, which generated $1.5 million in revenue during the fiscal year ending June 2007, primarily from the resale of discount lift tickets for members.
“In general our trip signups have been down a little this year, but the winter carnival condo signups are about the same as last year,” said Dave Zuraw, a former president of the Danbury Ski Club who coordinates trips on behalf of the Connecticut Ski Council. “Skiers and snowboarders love to spend time on the mountain ”“ they will just spend their ski dollars more wisely. The Danbury Ski Club and other clubs are hoping lodge attendance will increase. If we have good ski weather and gas prices keep dropping, I am confident that will be the case.”
Ski areas in both the Northeast and nationally are fresh off a record season last winter, when New England and New York slopes recorded more than 14,000 visitors according to the Colorado-based National Ski Areas Association. That was an incredible 21 percent lift, more than double the increase in visits experienced by resort operators in the Rocky Mountains and four other regions nationally.
New York boasts the most slopes in the nation with 50; Connecticut has just five, the largest being the 1,600-foot Mohawk Mountain in northern Litchfield County that operates two-dozen trails at peak snowfall and offers night skiing.
As of late December, Mohawk Mountain had an average 35-inch base of loose, granular snow ”“ much of it the result of snowmaking machines. Mohawk Mountain knows a thing or two on the topic ”“ a year after carving out the mountain”™s first trails in 1947, Northeast ski entrepreneur Walt Schoenknecht invented snowmaking. Schoenknecht would later earn the sobriquet of “the Walt Disney of Vermont” by creating a winter wonderland at Mount Snow, complete with a superheated outdoor swimming pool and a fountain that created a 150-foot mountain of ice each winter.
Several clubs schedule trips requiring airline tickets in addition to the lift variety. AE Ski Club, whose members live in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, is organizing a trip to Austria in the final 10 days of January. The travel package and lift tickets total $2,400.
The Connecticut Ski Council has organized a trip to Lake Tahoe the first week of February and the Waterbury-based NAVA Ski Club heads later that month to Whistler, British Columbia, which is finalizing preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The final major trip of the year may be the Hamden Ski Club”™s trip to Sunday River in Maine, which is owned by Michigan-based Boyne Resorts.
Boyne Resorts President Stephen Kircher told the Mountain News last month that the company”™s experience in recessions over six decades has taught it that snow conditions are the most important factor in the industry”™s success.
“My gut tells me this is a bit different kind of downturn,” Kircher told the publication. “I would think with good snow conditions nationally that the 55-million skier visit level is likely. Clearly with commodity prices falling so sharply and some of the recent pressures from accelerating energy and labor costs subsiding, there are some realistic ways for our industry to soften the impacts on the bottom line.”
While deals abound, Zuraw expects resorts to be able to hold the bottom line despite the chilled economy this winter.
“Many of the ski resorts we work with are doing everything they can and have been great to us, but it is usually quite difficult to get good discounts on convenient lodging,” Zuraw said. “Unfortunately, the days when we can run a two- or three-day bus trip for less than $100 per person, per day may never be seen again.”
