Resorts Happy to Take a Powder

Many call it a deluge, but ski operators are calling it a rejuvenation.

How important was Tuesday’s storm?

“We were down to our ice core,” said Dave Wilson, general manager of Big Air Snowboard Park in Green Valley Lake near Big Bear.

Now the former ski area is boarder heaven.

“We got 16 inches of fresh powder at the lodge and 24 inches up top,” Wilson said Thursday. “This is the best snow of the season, the best snow in four years. It’s dry Colorado powder, and the only people riding it now are our employees because everybody else is working.”

Business figures to pick up dramatically today and this weekend, especially with another series of storms expected to come ashore in the coming days.

That, of course, may be bad news in the soggy valleys and along an embattled coastal plain, but in the high country they’re looking to the heavens and begging for more.

Before Tuesday, it hadn’t snowed significantly in more than a month, and at the smaller resorts with limited or no snow-making capabilities, the cash registers were as bare as their mountains.

Mount Waterman, the oldest ski area in the Southland, opened Jan. 10 and remained open only for about a week before the lack of precipitation forced closure of the mountain.

Tuesday’s storm will enable Waterman, situated along Angeles Crest Highway near Wrightwood, to reopen today with some serious skiing.

“Our black-diamond face is right along the highway and people are driving by just salivating, begging us to let them go skiing,” lift operator Dimitri Sabius said Thursday. “We got 18 inches on Tuesday, so now we’re making a comeback. We’re just hoping we don’t get a warming trend, because that could kill us.”

In Wrightwood, Ski Sunrise, a low-profile resort that takes a back seat to Mountain High, got more than enough snow to allow for a reopening Wednesday after a two-week closure.

“We just got swamped,” said Jerry Price, general manager of a ski area that features one quad chair servicing intermediate and advanced terrain, a poma and a rope tow. “We had total whiteout conditions. You couldn’t see 20 feet, it was coming down so heavily, and it was like that all day long. We ended up with 24 inches.

“The only complaint came from a girl who was about 4 feet 5 or so. She came in kind of glum and said, ‘I keep falling and I can’t get up because the powder is too deep and my arms are too short.’ ”

Snowcrest Snowpark (formerly Kratka Ridge), a small ski area above La Canada, received two feet of new snow and is expected to be fully operational by Saturday.

At the other end of the San Gabriel Mountains, skiers and snowboarders at Mount Baldy were gliding silently down the mountain for a change.

“We were down to a 10- to 20-inch base, but it was as hard as concrete and like ice,” said Ron Ellingson, director of marketing for a resort that features spectacular views as well as some of the best skiing in Southern California--when there is enough snow.

Is there enough now?

Almost. The runs beneath Chair 1 are expected to open today, which would practically double the mountain’s advanced terrain and enable expert skiers a vertical drop of 2,100 feet, the longest of any Southland ski area.

Still, it will probably take one more low-level storm for Baldy to live up to its potential.

As for the major resorts--Mountain High, Bear Mountain, Snow Summit and Snow Valley--they are operating at 100% thanks to the most serious storm of the season, and making snow to boot.

THEN THERE IS MAMMOTH

“We have about 12 feet of snow, and we got five or six feet from the last storm,” Mammoth Mountain spokeswoman Jennifer Renner said. “It’s been really consistent, and it sounds like there are three storms in a row lined up to take a shot at us.”

Indeed, February is shaping up to be similar to February 1983, an El Nino winter, when 119 inches of snow fell during a season in which 567 inches were dumped on Mammoth’s slopes. That was second only to 1992-93, when 617 inches of snow fell.

SO FAR, SNOW GOOD . . .

Throughout Lake Tahoe, they’ve forgotten all about the winter of 1996-97, when January floods washed away any hopes of a profitable season.

Tahoe has been blanketed with snow for months, with a new layer added seemingly every few days.

“Since February 1, we’ve had more than 35 inches and it’s still coming down,” said Judy Daniels, a spokeswoman for Northstar-at-Tahoe. “Last year [after the rains], we had huge amounts of snowfall January 20-27, then nothing significant after that. Our base right now is 6-10 feet.”