Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park closes for the season

The season is over at Spokane’s backyard ski hill.

Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park announced over the weekend that Sunday would be its final day for the year, barring any miracle storms in the coming weeks. 

The mountain is going out on a high note. Last week’s storms brought between 15 and 18 inches of snow, according to general manager Jim van Loeben Sels, making for some of the best conditions of the year.

Normally, the nonprofit resort would stay open into April. But with this week’s weather forecast calling for wind and high temperatures, van Loeben Sels doesn’t think the mountain’s snow is going to hold up.

The unusually early end caps an unusually horrible season, one that will be remembered for warm temperatures and low snow levels. On more than a half-dozen occasions, Mt. Spokane staff hauled snow from the parking lot uphill to fill in parts of the mountain.  

“We gave it our best effort we could to stay open and give people a great experience,” van Loeben Sels said. “But I think that will change this week with the heat and the wind and I just don’t think we can give them a great experience.”

Van Loeben Sels will also remember this winter as one full of financial strain. He said a late start and light crowds led to a drop in revenue of more than $1.5 million, which prompted a number of cost cutting measures throughout the winter. Hours for employees were reduced, and the mountain closed to the public on Mondays and Tuesdays. 

Now the mountain’s permanent employees – including van Loeben Sels – are going to be furloughed through the summer to preserve the nonprofit’s cash reserves. He said that should keep the mountain in good shape for next winter. 

“Challenging year? Yes,” van Loeben Sels said. “Do I want to repeat it? No, thank you.”

Other resorts are staying open, including 49 Degrees North, Schweitzer, Lookout Pass and Silver Mountain. All are in a better position than Mt. Spokane, either because they received more snow this winter or because they have been able to bolster their base with snowmaking machines. 

Mt. Spokane lacks snowmaking machines and it sits at a lower elevation than the other resorts. Van Loeben Sels said the learning area near the lodge – with the magic carpet and the area underneath the Beginner’s Luck chairlift – operated with about eight inches of snow, van Loeben Sels said. Normally the area has between three and five feet. 

“We’re just kind of in that spot where we didn’t get as much snow as everyone else,” van Loeben Sels said. 

That was true from the beginning of the year. Mt. Spokane couldn’t open until Dec. 27, costing the hill a full month of skiing and any burst of holiday traffic. Even after that, much of the mountain’s terrain remained off-limits to skiers because there wasn’t enough snow to open it. 

“We weren’t ever really at full capacity except for one or two weekends,” van Loeben Sels said. 

The crowds were light all season long. Van Loeben Sels said on Monday that the mountain counted roughly 25,000 visitors this winter. In a typical winter, they see about 120,000. 

Unseasonable weather remained a problem all winter long. Before last week’s storms, high temperatures and wind melted snow off the bottom third of the mountain, forcing a closure on the second-to-last Sunday of the year. 

The snowstorm that arrived Thursday overperformed, and then the sun came out for Saturday and Sunday. Attendance peaked.

“There was a lot of pent up demand,” van Loeben Sels said. “This was the first significant snow event, and people came out in droves.”