Lack of snow hurting business on slopes
SAPPHIRE -- Running a ski business on the East Coast, where the mountains are shorter than the Western peaks, is dicey.
Operating a ski business in the South is even riskier. Some might even say a little crazy.
The cooler weather expected next weekend in Western North Carolina is giving local ski area managers reason to smile, but the past two weeks of abnormally high temperatures have caused some serious headaches.
Cataloochee Ski Area in Maggie Valley, about 45 minutes west of Asheville, closed Jan. 18 and plans to reopen Jan. 26. Sapphire Valley Ski Area in Jackson County, about an hour south of Asheville, had to shorten its hours.
According to the National Weather Service in Greenville, South Carolina, this January so far has been 6.4 degrees above normal for the Asheville area. Jan. 13 has been the warmest day through Jan. 21, with an average temperature of 51 degrees, which is 21 degrees above normal.
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Last year was the warmest on record in Asheville, with an average annual temperature of 58.4 degrees. This was the warmest year ever in Asheville since weather recording began in the 1880s. It was also the hottest year across the globe, according to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville.
The local and global warming trend is expected to continue, slowly crimping the seasons of WNC’s six ski areas.
“This weather is crazy. It’s been four seasons in the last 10 days,” Chris Green, mountain manager at Sapphire Valley, said Friday. “When it’s this warm no one’s thinking about going skiing. We have a short time to cover our bills. Skiing on the East Coast is a very short season. Any time we lose skiing it hurts us.”
The four-five month ski season in WNC is important not just to the private ski areas but the local economy as a whole.
A November 2015 economic value report commissioned by the North Carolina Ski Areas Association showed that the six ski areas contributed $197.2 million to North Carolina's economy during the 2014-15 season. That's the highest it's ever been, said Kim Jochl, president of the association and owner of Sugar Mountain Ski Resort in Avery County. The report is conducted every six to eight years.
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The study also found the region's six ski areas had more than 650,000 visits, provided 87 year-round jobs and 1,787 seasonal jobs and generated nearly $40 million in gross revenue from ski area operations. That includes lift tickets, lessons, equipment rental, retail stores, food and beverage and other operating departments.
Sugar Mountain, WNC’s largest ski area, can employ as many as 500 seasonal workers in the height of winter, but drop to as low as 100 during these kind of warm spells, Jochl said.
“We always look at the ski season as a whole,” she said. “Typically in North Carolina there is a warm spell. We understand it, we’ve all been through it. We’re not surprised when there’s warm weather. We don’t like it. Immediately it doesn’t look good, but we have hope in terms of past seasons, that people are just waiting to come.”
Most WNC ski resorts have invested millions of dollars in improved snow-making equipment so that they can begin making snow as soon as the weather cools and be open within a day.
Chris Bates, manager at Cataloochee Ski Area, said the ski industry was hurt when warm weather during the 2015-16 Christmas holidays when there was a long stretch of warmth. This year they closed Jan. 18 and expect to open Jan. 26.
“Certainly not in my history at Cataloochee (18 years) have we ever had to close in January,” Bates said. “But February and March look good.”
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