Land that snow forgot

Six winters ago, 95 feet of snow blanketed the Mt. Baker Ski Area in Washington state’s North Cascades, the most snow ever recorded in one place in the United States.

This season, the snowboarding mecca of the Northwest opened late and closed in January after 3 inches of rain in 24 hours melted a meager snowpack. The ski area hadn’t closed that early since 1976. It reopened after a Feb. 6 storm, but snow remains at less than a third of its average levels.

“It’s probably the worst ever,” says Mt. Baker Ski Area General Manager Duncan Howat, who’s been in the ski business 40 years.

While snow inundates the Sierra Nevada and Southern California mountain ranges, this winter is shaping up as the most dismal in decades in the Northwest. Skiers, snowboarders and ski area operators suffer today, and low runoff come spring threatens fly-fishers and whitewater enthusiasts. Snowless hillsides could also increase fire hazards and lead to forest closures for hikers, campers and hunters this summer. “Summer stream flows are likely to be very low, and the pain will be widespread,” says Scott Pattee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Dave Button of Pacific Northwest Float Trips in Burlington, Wash., says that without a snowy March and April, rafting season in the eastern Cascades probably will be cut in half and could last as little as two weeks.

Last week, seven of 10 ski areas in Washington were closed for lack of snow, with only Mt. Baker running all its lifts. Powder hounds spent weeks stuck in rainy lowlands while ski resorts laid off more than 2,000 employees.

The low-snow spell extends across much of the Northwest and into Canada. Two of four areas on Oregon’s Mt. Hood were closed, and six of the seven remaining Oregon ski spots are open despite subpar conditions.

In Idaho, half the typical snowfall has fallen on the panhandle region. Customers at the Schweitzer and Silver Mountain ski areas can use only one-third of the runs.

In British Columbia, conditions are more mixed. Whistler resort snowfall so far is just 34% of last year’s total, and at Whitewater, where snowfall is below half of normal levels for this time of year, managers say they may reduce operations in March. But at Fernie Alpine Resort, all 107 runs remain open and snow levels are near normal.

Few places, however, have been as hard hit as Stevens Pass ski area 90 minutes northeast of Seattle. Most winters, the resort employs more than 800 people.

Until late last week, when it managed to reopen almost half of its runs, Stevens Pass was down to 10 employees, says General Manager John Gifford. Restaurants, shops and rental cabins in nearby small towns sorely miss tourist dollars.

“Everybody’s in a state of shock,” says telemark skier Pete Bustanoby of Kenmore, Wash. He postponed indefinitely the telemark class he teaches for the Washington Alpine Club. “It’s so thin right now, you’ve got stumps and rocks to deal with. Usually you’ve got 10 feet of snow,” he says.

Where do Northwest skiers and snowboarders get their winter fix? Roughly 33 feet of snow has buried Squaw Valley and Mammoth so far this winter.

Some resorts from Alaska to British Columbia to Utah are offering discounted or free lift tickets to season pass holders and employees of closed Washington ski areas.

National Weather Service meteorologists say El Nino conditions in the eastern Pacific Ocean are warming the Northwest and contributing to storms in California.

“Here, the main effect is a warmer-than-average winter,” says Chris Burke, weather service spokesman in Seattle. “The freezing level is higher, and the precipitation that falls is in the form of rain, even in the mountains.”

Whether this winter in the Northwest is an anomaly or part of a bigger trend is anybody’s guess, but climate modelers at the University of Washington predict the region will see more such winters.