Ski resorts brace for an unpredictable season

Businesses seeing fewer casual skiers, out-of-state visitors

OLYMPIC VALLEY, Calif. — A trickle of skiers recently zigzagged down the slopes at the Squaw Valley Ski Resort. Couples and families wandered through the resort’s village, which was decorated with golden Christmas lights and frosted with snow.

It looked like the beginning of a merry season. But a closer inspection revealed it was anything but.

Restaurant patios were nearly empty as masked workers swept through with lime green disinfectant sprayers strapped to their backs, part of the $1 million that Squaw Valley has spent on sanitizing equipment and other safety measures. At ski lifts, sparse groups waited in socially distant lines. The resort felt “so dead,” said a skier, Sabrina Nottingham, partly because it was limiting ticket sales to fewer than 50% of the norm.

Squaw Valley, a marquee destination for winter sports enthusiasts, is one of many ski resorts across the country bracing for a highly unpredictable season. Forced to rethink how to operate in the coronavirus pandemic and with vaccines still rolling out, resorts have made a plethora of changes in places such as Aspen, Colorado; Park City, Utah; Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico; and Killington, Vermont. Many are setting visitor restrictions and requiring ticket reservations; New Mexico has limited resorts to 25% of capacity.

Resorts are also minimizing in-person interactions by installing kiosks for ticket pickups, adding space between people in line for ski lifts and gondolas, requiring masks, limiting the number of people on a lift at once and, in some places, shutting down indoor dining.

While the pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to the entire travel industry, ski resorts may feel a disproportionate impact this winter because of their short window of business. The ski industry already took a hit in the spring when the pandemic struck and many resorts had to close early, leading to $2 billion in losses and causing layoffs or furloughs of thousands of employees, according to the National Ski Areas Association, a trade group. The industry saw its lowest number of visits, 51 million, since the 2011-12 season, the association said.

Now resorts such as Squaw Valley are setting their expectations low for the new ski season.

“I don’t think that anybody in the business is looking to have this be their best year ever,” said Ron Cohen, president of Squaw Valley and neighboring Alpine Meadows, which laid off 2,000 seasonal workers last spring. “We want to preserve our businesses so that when COVID’s over, we have the opportunity to not have suffered so much damage that maybe we can’t stand back up.”

Mike Pierce, a spokesperson for Mount Rose Ski Tahoe, a resort in western Nevada, said the mindset was “to just maintain status quo and survive.” He declined to provide any financials but said, “If we break even, that’s almost considered a success.”

Even before the pandemic, the ski industry was laboring to build interest in the sport. The number of skiers has stagnated in the past decade, according to the National Ski Areas Association. Adrienne Isaac, a spokesperson for the trade group, said resorts have tried to make skiing and snowboarding more accessible for newcomers but have grappled with perceptions that they primarily cater to the rich and white. Climate change also continues to affect snowfall, she said, which can lead to shorter seasons.

How the ski resorts do this winter will have a domino effect on tax revenues for state economies. In New Mexico, the truncated ski season last winter and this spring generated $41 million in taxes, but George Brooks, executive director of the state’s ski association, said he expected no more than 40% of that number in the coming months.

Many resorts said they still expected some die-hard skiers and powderhounds to show up this winter, along with locals and those who have relocated to second homes nearby. At the Winter Park Resort west of Denver, a crush of eager skiers on opening weekend in December caused crowding at lift lines. The resort quickly enacted measures to allow more spacing, said Jen Miller, a spokesperson.

But the visitors who will not come, the resorts and other ski experts said, are most likely casual skiers and those traveling from long distances.

“We’re going to lose the mom and pop that want to bring their kids up,” Brooks said.

In Colorado, the Aspen Skiing Co., which operates four ski areas, has had steady business since reopening Nov. 25 but will miss out on the 20% of its yearly visitors who come from other countries, a spokesperson, Jeff Hanle, said. He said Aspen might also see fewer out-of-state travelers, especially if they live in places where they have to isolate upon their return.

Squaw Valley, which opened in 1949 and hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics, has undergone significant changes in recent years. In 2010, it was bought by a private equity group called KSL Capital Partners and merged with neighboring Alpine Meadows the following year. Combined, the two resorts stretch for 6,000 acres, the most of any in the Lake Tahoe area, and have 42 lifts and more than 270 trails.

In August, Squaw Valley said it would change its name by 2021 because “squaw” is considered a racist and sexist term for Native American women.

But nothing the resort has been through has rivaled the chaos of the pandemic, Cohen said. While he declined to disclose the financials for Squaw and Alpine, he described the losses in the spring as “devastating” and said the resorts were “operating at lower profit margins” this winter, with weaker sales.

The disruption became doubly evident in December when a new stay-athome order took effect in the area, forcing resorts to cancel hotel stays and adding another wrinkle for potential visitors.

For ski resorts, the mantra right now is “stay alive and survive,” Cohen said.

CAYCE CLIFFORD/THE NEW YORK TIMES Socially distanced skiers and snowboarders wait to board the Squaw One Express lift in December at Squaw Valley Ski Resort in Olympic Valley, California.