Small Ski Resorts Desperately Hope They’ll Get Snow

It’s maddening. The Mountain High resort’s snowy slopes glisten like a mirage in the distance above. Less than a mile below, the ground at Ski Sunrise is dark, dusty and definitely not skiable.

“You know you’ve worked hard to get the place ready to open, and now there’s no snow and, and . . . and. . . ,” sputtered Floyd Lumpkins as he stood on the hills of Ski Sunrise, the 100-acre slope in Wrightwood where he works.

“Why?” he asked, throwing his head back and addressing the clear blue sky.

Ski Sunrise has been open only 35 days in the last two years and has yet to welcome skiers this season. Meteorologists late last week predicted a snowstorm for Monday. But Lumpkins isn’t pinning his hopes on that, because his heart has been broken by weather forecasts before, and the slopes are so barren it would take at least two storms before Ski Sunrise could operate, he said.

What Lumpkins really wants is a better snow maker, because Ski Sunrise’s small one is inoperable.

Skiers have been at Mountain High, with several feet of man-made snow, since before Thanksgiving.

“Business is going real well,” said John McColly, marketing and public manager for the facility.

Ski Sunrise, one of about 10 small slopes in California that don’t have significant snow-making capability, has been losing money while waiting for Mother Nature to cooperate the last several years.

The resort’s owner, Howard More, 86, estimates that he has already spent $100,000 this year to prepare for an opening that might never come and that he lost $50,000 last season.

Bob Roberts, executive director of the California Ski Industry Assn., said: “It’s been a very tough couple of years for small slopes. [Ski Sunrise] has got to be one of the toughest situations. . . . They’ve been operating at a very minimal basis for a long time.”

The reminders of better days are all around Ski Sunrise. There’s a collage of pictures in the lodge from the moist 1998 El Nino season, showing smiling skiers up to their boots in snow or sliding down huge drifts. Now the dark-wood lodge is empty, save for a few old beer and champagne bottles left from a New Year’s Eve party. Recently, Ski Sunrise has made most of its money from the 10 to 12 special events it hosts every year, said general manager Marilyn Walker.

Hopes for heavy snows this season attracted more members of the Walker family to Ski Sunrise. Walker’s brother, Darrel DeFreitas, decided to take a four-month break from his farming job in Montana to work as the slope supervisor. “I figured there would be great snow here,” he said.

Instead, he found slopes overgrown with wild grass and weeds. Two broken snow tractors, one lacking an engine, sit idle. DeFreitas and his skeleton crew get around in a rickety 1963 van, repairing and doing maintenance on the four lifts. “If I tell you to jump, be sure and jump,” he warned a visitor.

In the engine room of Poma Lift Three, DeFreitas pointed to the rust-colored gears made in the 1950s and the crooked ladder that leads to the engine room. “We’re at least 20 years behind Mountain High. This place could be so awesome if we had some more money to put into the place,” he said.

More said that he’s “been wanting to upgrade the snow makers for 30 years” but that he lacks the capital to do it. Although he made “some pretty good money” as an executive with an aluminum company, he can’t afford to launch widespread changes without the profits a few good seasons would give him.

“We’re alive and kicking, but we have not really lived up to the potential of the place. To do that we’ll need adequate snow making, that’s the whole answer,” he said.

Ski Sunrise’s financial predicament is not unusual for small slopes, Roberts said.

“Without snow-making capability, it becomes like a poker hand. It becomes a question of how to maximize the hands you know you’re going to win and minimize the losses when you know you’re going to lose,” he said. “Small slopes have been losing.”

In contrast, resorts like Mountain High don’t have to pay much attention to the cards they are dealt because, with their large snow-making capability, “the weather’s almost irrelevant for them,” Roberts said. “Just so long as it’s not too cold or too wet, they can make snow whenever they want.”

For example, parts of Mountain High have been open since Nov. 3 thanks to its man-made snow, McColly said.

During the last two seasons, more than 700,000 people have skied its slopes, he said.

Back at Ski Sunrise, employees do their best not to look at Mountain High and instead watch the Internet for weather updates. None of the employees admits to being worried about being laid off, but all say they will earn more money once--if--the ski season starts.

“We’ve done all this work,” Lumpkins said from the dusty expanse of “Nightmare,” Ski Sunrise’s most challenging slope, as he shielded his eyes and stared into the distance. “Let’s get some snow here.”