East Coast Ski Resorts Outperform West

For once, skiing in the West wasn’t the best.

East Coast ski resorts lavished in tons of powder this past ski season, leading to a healthy increase in skier visits. Meanwhile, Western ski havens - especially in the Pacific Northwest - saw their skier bases melt some.

The National ski Areas Association reported Monday that skier visits were up slightly across the nation, but mostly from a 22.8 percent boom in northeastern ski hills.

In the Inland Northwest, most ski areas reported a drop of 15 percent up to 20 percent in skier visits and revenue. Bad weather was to blame in the early season, when it was plenty moist but too warm to build good snow bases.

According to a survey for the association by RRC Associates, a research firm based in Boulder, Colo., Alpine resort visits increased 0.8 percent to an estimated 53.1 million visits, up from 52.7 million in the 1994-95 season.

A skier/snowboarder visit represents one person visiting a ski area for all or part of a day or night.

The results were a reversal from the previous season, when Western ski resorts had the better snow.

The Pacific West showed a decline of almost 22 percent while the Midwest gained 3.4 percent. Fewer skier visits in the Inland Northwest means fewer tourism dollars pumped into the local economy. The lack of good snow during the crucial Christmas and New Year’s holiday weekends hurt ski resorts.

, DataTimes