Ski areas may spin data to attract customers

It’s the act of submission before paying the price of admission: seven hours in the car to Kirkwood, six to Tahoe, five to Mammoth or, if you get a real late start, an excruciating limp up two-laners to Southern California ski areas.

After a long countdown to assemble gear and rouse cohorts for a road trip, you want an epic session at the end of the tunnel.

But if you rely only on the resorts’ e-reports of snowfall and grooming conditions in selecting a destination, you may be disappointed.

Ski resort marketers tempt skiers by prominently featuring daily snowfall totals on their websites or lobbing mass e-mails when a foot or more has fallen in a day.

Sounds promising, but even the prospect of a foot of freshly fallen white stuff can be misleading.

Depending on the time of year, a foot of snow on a sun-shaded intermediate run may be far more skiable than expert terrain where early-season snow is like frosting over razor blades.

As a one-time snow forecaster for a mountain resort in the West, I based my “snow report” solely on a quick call from a groomer who took his measurement from a stick stuck on the lee side of a hill where even windblown dust would be reported as new.

A resort can also mask poor snow conditions by projecting snowfall totals from total precipitation -- even though in warm years much of the precipitation is rain, not snow.

Snow guru Tony Crocker says sometimes it’s what resorts don’t say that matters most.

“It’s rare for resort websites to lie about snowfall, but they won’t say anything if it rains,” says the insurance actuary whose mania for snowfall statistics has been the driving factor behind his comprehensive website bestsnow.net.

Crocker, who provides snow statistics to The Times, has assembled decades of snowfall measurements to create a national inventory.

Tracking snow levels, year-to-year variation and abnormal seasons, he can estimate where conditions can be good early, frustratingly dry midwinter or last late into spring (Sierra resorts qualify in all three categories).

Urban ski bums rely on the buddy system for snow forecasts or turn to snow resort webcams before hitting the road, according to Tom Bie, editor of Powder Magazine.

“Your real hard-core skier or snowboarder can just call up a friend who’s a ski patroller or somebody who can say, ‘Yeah, it’s dumping out there.”

“And if you’re familiar with a particular area, you can tell from the webcams how much coverage base areas are getting, whether snow is sticking to lift shacks, chair lift poles or trees,” Bie says.

Backcountry skiers also use local knowledge to predict when to skip work for a day at Mt. Pinos or in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Upon hearing reports of favorable conditions and new snowfall, members of the Sierra Club’s Ski Mountaineering Section are known to hoof it three miles in darkness to a hut below the summit of Mt. San Antonio in preparation for skiing the backcountry Baldy Bowl the next day.

The Internet has made weather watching nearly as useful as a ski town buddy. Site-specific portals such as www.mammothweather.com show not only local weather but a satellite image of storms curling in from the Gulf of Alaska.

For the rest of us, the problem is balancing pesky nonsnow commitments when big snowfall coincides with your turn at the timeshare.

By the time TV news cranks up the storm watches, rooms have already sold out through New Year’s. And don’t bother asking reservations agents about conditions. Most, like those at Mammoth Lakes, sit at a computer in Los Angeles.

“People will call up and ask, ‘How’s the weather up there?’ ” says concierge Jefferson Lanz. “And I’ll say, ‘Well, let me open the window.’ We laugh, then I read them the weather report.”