Skiing Magazine came out with a recent photo feature on “The Snowiest Resorts of the Season So Far,” and six of them — including White Pass — were in this part of the country.
The three with the deepest current snow base listed were Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood with 117 inches, Mount Baker with 130 inches and White Pass with 110 — and White Pass’ base was up to 121 by late last week.
Apparently, the magazine was trumpeting what some hard-core skiers and snowboarders already knew: If you want to find snow, head north and west.
A couple of weeks ago, Kathleen Goyette — whose job as marketing director at White Pass ski area means she also occasionally finds herself directing visitors in the parking lot — saw an indication of that.
“A couple of carloads of kids pulled in, probably 18- to 21-year-old boys,” Goyette said. “One carload was from New York and one was from Rhode Island. They were really on kind of an epic quest for snow.”
Then, last Wednesday, Goyette was talking on the phone with the owner of a regional chain of snowboard stores who had attended a major snowboard event, the Legendary Banked Slalom, at Mount Baker.
“And he said the word up there was ‘You’ve got to come down to White Pass,’ especially since we’ve built this new terrain park,” Goyette said. “He was saying, ‘Get ready, because everybody’s headed your way.'”
That news couldn’t come at a better time for White Pass, where as of last week visitorship was still down about 7 percent from the same time last year — even though the month of January saw visitorship up a hefty 34 percent from the same month in 2011.
The pitfall was the bad weather during the Christmas holidays, typically one of the busiest weeks of the year. A run of heavy rain and strong winds kept visitors away and even closed the ski area for a full day, though the weather did manage to clear up in time for an outstanding New Years Day weekend.
Not all Pacific Northwest resorts have been as fortunate as White Pass.
“What I’ve been hearing is regionally it’s feast or famine,” said Scott Kaden of the Pacific Northwest Ski Areas Association. “Regionally, the northern half is doing better in terms of snow deposition. Southern Oregon and parts of central Oregon have had less snowfall than the northern parts of Oregon and Washington.
“What we were told to expect from La Nina was great variability, and we’ve seen that this year region-wide.”
