FARMINGTON – After months of unseasonably warm weather brought lots of rain and next to no snow to Maine in December and January, ski areas big and small statewide are feeling a financial pinch.
But it’s the smaller ones, lacking the financial resources to keep making tons of snow when it only melts as the weather warms, that stand to lose the most if February fails to bring big snows.
Randy Rose, president of Spruce Mountain in Jay, said Friday that January’s dearth of snow has “affected us badly.”
“We’ve pretty much used whatever funds we had for snowmaking,” he said. To make matters worse, he said, the high cost of gas this winter has drained the ski area’s budget for snowmaking fuel, and, “The winter’s been so mild, it’s been hard to even make snow.” Temperatures need to be in the 20s or below to make snow, he said.
After heavy rains in the past few weeks washed most of the snow left on the mountain away, Rose said, Spruce had to close down entirely. “Right now, we’re not open,” he said Friday. But Spruce Mountain is a nonprofit organization, Rose added, and because most of the ski area’s labor force is made up of volunteers, no layoffs have been made. The few paid workers hired on contract are “just not getting as much work as they normally would,” according to Rick Couture, the mountain’s vice president.
“It’s been a long time since we had a winter this bad,” Rose said.
Karleen Andrews, manager of not-for-profit Titcomb Mountain in Farmington, said Titcomb has also burned through its snowmaking budget, and would be in similarly dire straits if not for a “significant contribution from someone in the ski industry.”
Like Spruce Mountain, Titcomb closed for five days two weeks ago, but with the help of the donation was able to make enough snow to replenish the base on its major trails. As of Thursday, the mountain was open and holding classes for youngsters.
Even after a terrible start to the year, Greg Sweetser, executive director of Ski Maine, said Thursday that with big snows still possible for February and March, there’s hope for the smaller ski areas.
“It’s no secret January has been a warm month,” he said, but added, “That’s really not that unusual.” Ski areas budget for slow business in January, he said, because the weather tends to be unreliable, with either extreme warm or extreme cold weather. “Our (January) temperature spreads (in Maine) are roughly 50 degrees between the warmest day,” and the coldest one, he said.
Snowmaking becomes a bigger part of the business in warmer months, but now that all but two small alpine ski areas in Maine have at least some snow-making capability, mountains are not dependent entirely on Mother Nature, Sweetser added.
But, “It hurts to have to make snow in late January,” he said, and now the big question facing the smaller mountains is, “can they make it up in February?”
“February and March are the key months,” for Maine’s skiing industry, Sweetser said. Last year there was little snow until the end of January, he said, and although the extremely chilly weather kept the man-made snow on the mountains, it also reduced the volume of skiers willing to spend hours out in the cold. But by the end of March last year, Sweetser said, “the city of Portland had set close to an all-time snow record – it was one of the snowiest years in Maine, but it all came in February and March.”
“What else are we going to be but optimistic?” Sweetser said. “We have seen these cycles, and we get through them.”
Getting by until snow comes, along with colder temperatures, is all the small mountains can do at this point.
At Black Mountain in Rumford, Friday’s rain forced a change plans for the day. “We closed today. It was just too soggy to open up. When you need kayaks to come down the mountain, it’s time to hang up the skis,” said mountain spokesman Craig Zurhorst. “We’re going to let it drain, then we anticipate being open at 9 o’clock in the morning Saturday. We have a slalom race scheduled for 10 a.m.”
The message on Mt. Abram’s machine Friday night said the area received 10 inches of new snow this week, and indicated no schedule changes.
Connie King, one of the owners of Lost Valley in Auburn, said in spite of the warmth and rain, the ski area’s operators have kept on trucking to stay open, literally. “One day we even had to truck some snow in,” she said. It was the first time ever.
Lost Valley had to close a few days because of the rain, King said, but children’s programs “have still been running, and the snow is on the hill.”
The hardest thing for Lost Valley this winter has been convincing skiers that, “Yes, we have snow,” she said. “Once we get em here, the skiing’s great,” she said.
“Mother Nature has done us no favors,” she said, but “if we can have a good school vacation week (in February), we can be OK.”
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