No-Snow Ski Season

In Utah's Wasatch Mountains, ho tel owners riffling through sheafs of canceled reservations look out on tawny brown slopes and frustratingly blue skies. President Ford, vacationing in Vail, Colo., spends a few hours a day slaloming between exposed patches of grass and rocks, then quits to sit by the fire, going over official documents. At Idaho's Sun Valley, only limited skiing is available, so more guests than usual while away their time trapshooting, riding horses and trading volleys on the tennis courts. In Northern California's Heavenly Valley, San Francisco secretary Lani Palmer practices parallel turns on an inclined treadmill of 30-ft.-wide Mylar carpeting strung between two spinning rollers. Says she: "That carpet makes it seem like I'm skiing through a dentist's office."

Never has a ski season in the West got off to a more dismal start. Skiing is a $475 million annual industry in the Western snow country of California, Colorado, Idaho and Utah, and resort owners from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada count on taking in fully one-fourth of their profits during the holiday period between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Snow normally begins piling up by mid-November, and by Christmas it usually blankets the slopes in layers 40 to 50 in. thick.

Frozen Out. Not this year. With only the barest dusting of powder in the high country, lifts are closed, lodges vacant and resort attendance off as much as 90% in some areas. About 10,000 skiers a day customarily pack the slopes at Heavenly Valley, but this year there are fewer than 1,000. At nearby Squaw Valley, the management has cut its staff to a mere 20 employees, v. the normal 700. So many of California's lodges have closed that unemployment rolls in Mono County have reached 20%, and applications for food stamps are running so high that the county welfare office had to call for emergency clerical help from Sacramento.

Of Idaho's 26 ski resorts, only one--Sun Valley--has even begun to function; it has skiing on artificial snow on just 2 1/2 of its 50 runs. And in Colorado, where losses have mounted to $30 million, Senator Floyd Haskell has asked President Ford to declare a natural-disaster area. While awaiting official action, Vail Developer Peter Seibert hired local Ute Indians to perform a ritual snow dance. The results were negligible. Says Seibert: "We're getting a little snow, but it's just enough to cover up the cigarette butts."

Meanwhile, the blight of fair weather in the West has proved to be a bonanza for ski areas in the Northeast. These areas are operating at near capacity as vacationers switch to New England and upstate New York. To cap their good luck, last Wednesday some ski areas in the Northeast were hit by a near blizzard.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.