Ski Resorts Take Mountain Bikes for Summer Ride : Recreation: With an eye to building year-round business, many are clearing trails and

A ski resort in summer is about as quiet as, well, a ski resort in summer.

But the stillness of the slow season is being broken these days by mountain bikers riding their $600 RockHoppers and $700 StumpJumpers across new trails and up the slopes aboard chairlifts. Despite some drawbacks and environmental concerns, the fast-growing sport is the latest attraction adopted by ski area owners seeking to expand their operations beyond the winter months and retain key employees year-round.

Resorts have opened up their land to campers, concert goers and picnickers as well as mountain bikers. At the Northstar at Tahoe resort in Northern California, an 18-hole golf course becomes the center of attention during the summer while ski shops and bars are transformed into meeting rooms for business seminars and family reunions. A year-round conference center is under construction adjacent to Squaw Valley USA, which is also opening up a spa and tennis club.

“They are looking for ways to develop year-round sources of cash flow,” said Bob Roberts, executive director of the California Ski Industry Assn. “We have to have better help and more qualified help,” he said, and “you can’t do that on a seasonal basis.”

The need to make a year-round business out of a seasonal industry is particularly acute in Southern California, where a string of relatively mild winters has left business flat for most resorts. Statewide, the number of visits were off 10% to 6.4 million in 1989, according to Roberts.

“Given our (poor) ski season in the last five years, we need to protect ourselves,” said Margaret Krajewski, marketing director of Snow Valley, a San Bernardino Mountain ski area that is planning to open up to mountain bikes this summer. “There is no guarantee with the weather.”

But even the most successful summer programs are never expected to match the winter skiing business, and some efforts have not panned out. Costly maintenance forced the Boreal Ski Area north of Lake Tahoe to dismantle its Alpine Slide and bumper boat attractions and focus instead on such activities as wrestling and gymnastics camps, says marketing director Earle Davis.

Mountain biking looks like a better bet than bumper boats, say ski officials. Introduced in the late 1970s, mountain bikes, which are built for off-road use with sturdy frames, fat tires and up to 21 gears, accounted for about half of the 10.7 million bicycles sold in the United States during 1989, according to the National Bicycle Dealers Assn. But only 20% of mountain bikes ever travel off-road, much less on a mountain trail.

“They really sort of have taken over,” said association spokesman Fred Clements. “In Southern California, some dealers are telling us that mountain bikes are 80% of what they sell.”

To attract the large pool of occasional mountain bikers, ski areas have outfitted their chairlifts with hooks to carry bikes for those riders who do not care for the time and effort needed to ride up steep trails.

“People are a bit intimidated,” said Patrick Follett, co-owner of Team Big Bear Mountain Bike Center. “The chair lift just makes it very convenient. There are people who just like to go downhill on a mountain bike.”

Follett and partner Tom Spiegel recently relocated their shop to the grounds of the Snow Summit ski area near Big Bear Lake, where cyclists pay $6 for one ride--or $15 for an all-day pass--on the chairlift to Forest Service trails. Last year, about 80 riders a day used the lift during peak weekends.

At Mammoth Mountain in the eastern Sierra, for the past three summers mountain bikers have been paying up to $243 for three-night guided tours. The resort, which promotes its summer facilities to skiers during the winter, is also finishing a mountain bike park with nearly 50 miles of trails and a slalom race course.

“It’s like a ski course, but people are doing it on their bike instead,” said Jennifer Renner, marketing manager of the Mammoth Mountain Inn.

The introduction of mountain bikes raises environmental and safety concerns. Reckless bikers have forced officials to ban or restrict mountain biking in numerous regions, including the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, where riders are limited to fire roads.

To mitigate problems, the San Bernardino National Forest required that Team Big Bear at Snow Summit pass out trail maps and brochures on biker etiquette, said Cindy Dimmel, resource officer for the Big Bear ranger district. The shop also paid for and installed directional signs at trail crossings.

Mountain biking in the summer, like skiing in the winter, is at the mercy of the weather. Normally, between 150 and 180 riders use the chair lift on a Saturday at this time of year. But rain can reduce that number by 100.

But the rain did not keep Pat Beezley, a 37-year-old El Toro building designer, away. “This is a convenient thing to do and saves a lot of energy riding up the hill,” said Beezley, who was taking the lift up for the second time that day.

“It would take so long and be so hard for someone starting out,” said Bob Hefner, who accompanied Beezley. Besides, he said, “it’s more fun coming down the mountain.”