Ski Resort Operator, 79, Ready to Leave Mountaintop to New Owners and Man-Made Snow
After half a century wrangling with snowdrifts and ski bums, 79-year-old Lynn Newcomb is winding down his days on Mt. Waterman, the ski area he helped build in the Angeles National Forest north of La Canada Flintridge.
The resort, with vintage ski lifts and no snow-making equipment, was open just five days last winter for lack of snow. Newcomb says he is planning to sell the works to Torrance-based BRGS Inc., a partnership that lists snow-making equipment as its top priority.
“I’m too old to get out there and work the way I used to. I’ve had a four-way [heart] bypass. Age has started to catch up with me,” said Newcomb, a former World War II fighter pilot who is widely regarded as a pioneer in the California ski industry.
The U.S. Forest Service, which owns the land Mt. Waterman operates on, has already approved a snow-making system for the resort, according to Ranger Terry Ellis. But Ellis said the prospective new owners have submitted plans for a bigger snow-making system and expanded operations, which will require a separate approval now pending.
Barry Stubblefield, a partner in BRGS, said he hopes to begin construction in May and complete the $3-million snow-making system in time for next winter. The group would also spend $1.5 million on new buildings, rental equipment and other improvements.
“Our biggest hurdle right now is the financing,” said Stubblefield, who, like Newcomb, would not disclose a purchase price. “How soon we build the system will depend on how soon we can raise the money.”
Stubblefield is a director of due diligence for Southern California Edison Co., a position in which he evaluates companies that Edison is thinking of buying or selling. His partners in BRGS include his brother, Greg, and other investors. Newcomb would remain a consultant and a board member, with nephew Jim Newcomb becoming a BRGS shareholder.
Newcomb built a reservoir for the snow-making system 10 years ago but then stopped work on the system “after I realized how much work I would be taking on,” he said.
Industry experts say resorts without snow-making equipment live on the edge. But Mt. Waterman, where the top elevation is just a little more than 8,000 feet, probably can be profitable with man-made snow capability, said Bob Roberts, executive director of the San Francisco-based California Ski Industry Assn.
Even so, there’s nothing like a fresh mantle of snow on the mountains to draw skiers.
The four major ski areas of Southern California--Bear Mountain, Snow Valley, Mountain High and Snow Summit--all had only average to below-average years last year because of the dry, balmy winter, noted John McColly, marketing manager at Mountain High.
“When people see snow on the mountains, it stimulates them to go skiing more than anything we can do in our marketing efforts,” McColly said.
Mountain High drew 425,000 in the 1997-98 season, when El Nino pounded the slopes with snow. Last winter’s attendance was 385,000, he said.
Ski resort operators also face a downhill trend after the big lift they enjoyed through much of the 1970s and 1980s, according to figures from the National Ski Areas Assn. and the National Sporting Goods Assn. The number of visitors to ski resorts has been stagnant at about 54 million for most of the 1990s, and the number of resorts is down to 521 after peaking at more than 700 in 1970.
Smaller resorts such as Mt. Waterman and neighboring Snowcrest also face competition from the larger ski centers, such as those at Big Bear, which offer “more of a resort experience,” according to Macy Allatt, assistant editor of Ski Magazine.
At Snowcrest, owner John Steely said he tried snow-making equipment on about 25% of the resort’s slopes during the winter of 1996-97 but removed it after one year because he was disappointed in the performance of the particular system he installed.
“We still think about snow-making equipment all the time, but it’s a question of the expense,” Steely said. He said Snowcrest spent about $300,000 for the snow-making equipment but lost only about $50,000 “because we were able to return most of the equipment.”
The difficulty of making money in snowless years and a desire to generate year-round income have prompted many resorts to add summer activities such as mountain biking.
Snowcrest staged a series of concerts over the years to boost revenue, Steely said, including a “rave” earlier this summer that was widely publicized after five teenagers driving home from the event were killed when their car plunged off Angeles Crest Highway.
Steely said the Forest Service has suspended permits for raves until further notice, but he said he wouldn’t stage another one even if the suspension were lifted.
The year-round activities and the stiff competition from bigger resorts are all signs of how thoroughly the business has changed since 1942, when Newcomb and his father installed what was, according to some accounts, the first ski lift in Southern California.
“Mt. Waterman is really a throwback to what skiing used to be like, when it was really just a sport, before it evolved into the recreation and entertainment business,” Roberts said.
Skiing on Mt. Waterman “is like skiing with family because everybody up there knows everybody else,” said Neil Reynolds, a ski shop manager at the Sport Chalet in La Canada Flintridge.
Unlike fancier places that require skiers to remain on formal runs, Mt. Waterman offers “tree skiing,” meaning skiers can venture off the marked runs and through the forest.
“They have some groomed runs too, but the tree skiing is great,” Reynolds said.
Newcomb himself is something of a living legend in the mountains, where his family first homesteaded in 1891. He grew up in Hollywood but spent summers hiking the mountain and surrounding slopes.
His father, who ran a construction firm in Los Angeles, asked him to pick out the sites for the first Mt. Waterman ski runs and the first chairlift in 1940. The mountain had only a rope tow for skiers until 1942, when the first of three lifts was installed.
Newcomb, recalling he was then a USC engineering student, said he loved the mountain but was even more drawn to “the sound of propellers” when World War II broke out. He quit USC and joined the Army Air Corps, spending part of his time as a flight instructor and part as a fighter pilot.
After the war, Newcomb returned to the mountain, where he ran Mt. Waterman until 1995, when he sold it. (The Forest Service owns Mt. Waterman’s approximately 150 acres of land, but Newcomb owns and operates the ski resort under a Forest Service permit.)
“The sale backfired on me, the new owners had two bad years, we got involved in a lawsuit, and, finally, I got it back,” he said.
He estimated the best season ever at Mt. Waterman tallied about 90 days of skiing, but he figures snow-making equipment would guarantee about 120 days a year.
Besides keeping his hands in Mt. Waterman as an advisor to the new owners, Newcomb will remain on the mountain as the owner of about 10 acres of the original 160-acre Newcomb Homestead, most of which the Forest Service bought a few years ago. The site includes the rustic Newcomb Ranch Inn, a popular stop among Angeles Forest travelers, which Newcomb leases to the Inn’s operator.
Despite his pending retirement from active duty, one of Newcomb’s recent tape-recorded Mt. Waterman reports--he does them summer and winter--suggests he can be counted on to visit the mountaintop frequently.
Said the report: “It’s nice and dry, and the air is so clean and pure you can see the whole world, just about. Anyway, it’s beautiful.”
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Mt. Waterman Ski Resort:
8,000 feet elev.
150 acres
3 lifts
1,200-foot vertical drop
