SKIING / BOB LOCHNER : Early Birds Get an Extra Lift at Mt. Waterman

Mt. Waterman will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Southern California’s first chairlift Saturday with an offer that early risers should find hard to refuse.

Every car pool with four or more skiers arriving before 10 a.m. will be able to buy all-day adult lift tickets for $2.50 a person, according to Marilee Hanson of the resort’s ski patrol. Why $2.50? That was the price of a lift ticket on Jan. 25, 1942.

And, of course, it sure beats the $30 tab that goes back into effect after 10.

What’s more, skiers won’t have to ride that original lift. It has since been replaced by a newer model and joined by a couple of others.

The first chair was being built at the start of World War II, according to Mt. Waterman’s longtime owner, Lynn Newcomb, who said he remembers “running up the hill to tell my father, working on one of the lift towers, that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.”

Because Mt. Waterman, 35 miles from La Canada on Angeles Crest Highway (California 2), has no snow-making equipment, it promises “real snow”--about three to four feet deep at the moment.

Skiing Notes

Austrian Bernhard Knauss, riding high with 330 points and earnings of $69,619, leads the U.S. Pro Tour into South Lake Tahoe this weekend for the Chrysler-Plymouth Western Championships and celebrity ski races at Heavenly. The schedule includes a giant slalom at 10:30 a.m. today, a slalom at 11 a.m. Saturday and a pro-celebrity race at 11 a.m. Sunday. . . . Mammoth Mountain will play host to the Coca-Cola Jr. NASTAR Open Thursday. . . . Bear Mountain, at Big Bear Lake, has opened a new Outlaw Snowboard Park on Outlaw Trail. It is exclusively for shredders and contains jumps, rail slides, quarter-pipes and a world-class half-pipe.

As the Winter Olympic countdown dwindles to a few days, Alpine skiers are competing this weekend in World Cup races at Wengen, Switzerland, site of the traditional Lauberhorn men’s downhill and slalom, and at Morzine, France, where the women have a downhill and super-G scheduled. . . . Paul Accola of Switzerland continues to top the men’s overall standings with 1,090 points, 130 more than runner-up Alberto Tomba of Italy; four-time champion Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg is third with 659. . . . Leading the women is Vreni Schneider of Switzerland, who has 700 points, 127 more than second-place Petra Kronberger of Austria. Carole Merle, one of France’s main medal hopes next month, is third with 504.

Matt Grosjean of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in his first race since recovering from early-season injuries, had the ninth-fastest time midway through the first run of last Sunday’s World Cup slalom at Kitzbuhel, Austria, but straddled a gate and failed to finish. . . . The previous day, AJ Kitt of Rochester, N.Y., placed second to Swiss star Franz Heinzer in the Hahnenkamm downhill at Kitzbuhel. . . . Julie Parisien of Auburn, Me., had an eventful week, taking third in a World Cup slalom at Hinterstoder, Austria, on Jan. 14, then losing several teeth when she collided with a recreational skier last Friday. After a little dental work, she finished sixth in the World Cup giant slalom Monday at Piancavallo, Italy. . . . The United States had three racers in the top six at Piancavallo, with Eva Twardokens of Santa Cruz finishing third and Diann Roffe of Potsdam, N.Y., winding up fourth behind Merle and Schneider, who were 1-2.

ESPN will show taped highlights of the Kitzbuhel slalom today at 5 p.m. . . . Sunday at 3:30 p.m., ESPN will televise the pro-celebrity action from Heavenly. Other ski racing on ESPN includes taped segments from the Women’s Pro Ski Tour event at White Tail, Pa., Wednesday at 2 p.m., and the Wengen downhill next Friday at 5 p.m. . . . CBS continues its “Countdown to Albertville” series Sunday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., on Channels 2 and 8. . . . Donna Weinbrecht of West Milford, N.J., scored her fifth consecutive moguls victory last weekend at Breckenridge, Colo. The freestylers wind up their pre-Olympic campaign this weekend at Lake Placid, N.Y.