Ski Industry Is Having Best Season in Years

G R E A T  B A R R I N G T O N, Mass., Jan. 11 -- The lines are long, the snow is deep, the winter has been cold, and Aynar Aas could not be happier.

"It's been very, very nice. This is the best opening I've seen in a long time," says the ski resort veteran who wears a weathered grin.

For 37 years, Aas has worked the mountain at Ski Butternut, near Great Barrington, Mass. "We opened early and have good conditions," says Aas, who today runs the mid-sized resort's rental operations. "We almost ran out of rental equipment four days in a row, which is the greatest problem to have."

From California to Maine, the U.S. ski industry is having its best season in at least four years. Some resorts are doing record business.

"The sound you hear from the mountains is the collective sigh of … finally," says Greg Trinket, Senior Editor of Ski Magazine in Boulder, Colo. "After a couple of rather thin snow winters the snow has been deep so far and the smiles are really wide."

And the busiest days of the year are still to come: the Martin Luther King holiday, and President's Day weekend.

Have Snow, Will Ski

With mild weather during much of the past decade, many ski resorts have scrambled to improve snowmaking and grooming, doing the best they can when nature doesn't co-operate.

"Over the last three years we have added 130 snow-making tower guns," says Butternut executive Matt Sawyer.

But the snow is much deeper this winter than in years past, and already the slopes are crowded.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula had nearly 90 inches of snow in December, more than double the normal amount. Nub's Nob in Michigan ceased snow-making in early January — the earliest date in 30 years — and Smugglers Notch in Vermont has 191 inches of snow, compared with 69 inches at this time last year.

The abundance of snow has brought out the skiers. The number of skiers at Gore Mountain in New York was up 50 percent from last year during the Christmas-to-New Year holiday week. In Vail, Colo., the slopes were so packed with tourists on New Year's Eve that the police had be called in to handle the crowds.