Hurricane Ridge: An uphill battle for winter access

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK (AP) — Greg Halberg remembers when you could enjoy the snowy hills and meadows of Hurricane Ridge on a whim.

Just grab your skis and go.

Nowadays, a trip to the Olympic Mountains’ premier winter playground requires meticulous consultations with Olympic National Park’s ever-changing schedules, rules and fees, the Kitsap Sun reported.

“And then when you drive all the way out, it might be closed or opening a lot later, or the parking lot’s full, or you need chains and you didn’t bring them,” said Halberg, who leads the Hurricane Ridge Winter Access Coalition. “If there’s all these hassles you might try again once or twice, but next time you’re going to Crystal.”

Or Stevens Pass or Mt. Baker or any of the larger and more dependable ski and snowboard destinations on the other side of Puget Sound.

Once open seven days a week, the ridge is now limited to a weather-dependent Friday to Sunday schedule. Access isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. Plowing the ridge’s only road is a major expense for a park that’s seen its budget and staffing levels shrink and maintenance costs grow. Park priorities have also changed. The low-impact, wilderness aesthetic is in. Ski lifts, groomed snow and other not-so-natural attractions are out.

Community groups have tried several times to raise money for expanded access, but those efforts have “fizzled out,” said longtime ridge advocate Roger Oakes.

“People have put their heart and soul into this,” he said. “There are people with Hurricane Ridge in their blood. But it’s been hard.”

Hurricane Ridge is on the heavily-traveled north side of Olympic National Park. About an hour’s drive from Port Angles, it’s one of the park’s top draws during the summer, offering close-up views of mountains and far-off views of the sea.

The ridge’s ski area opened in 1958 with two rope tows from a decommissioned ski resort in nearby Deer Park. In 1971, a Poma lift was added, making the ridge a magnet for serious skiers.

The park operates the visitor center, but a nonprofit group, Hurricane Ridge Winter Sports Club, manages almost everything else — ticket sales, rope tows, the lift and the ridge’s long-running ski school. It’s a break-even enterprise fueled mostly by the passion of its supporters, said Oakes, who serves on the club’s board.

The ski area is a bit of a time capsule, unchanged since the 1970s. It’s unabashedly blue-collar and family-friendly.

“The ski industry has sold itself as being a rich person’s sport,” Holberg said. “It’s about glamor and a pampered, spa experience. That’s not Hurricane Ridge. It’s raw. It’s pure and authentic.”

Consistent full-week access ended in 1999. Predictably, visitation declined. The average January visitor count was 13,200 during the last seven years of full-week access. The three-day schedule, established in 2006, dropped the January average to just under 8,000, with 2010 hitting a bottom-of-the-barrel 3,900 visitors.

Port Angeles, which serves as a gateway to the ridge, felt the loss of tourism dollars, spurring then-mayor Cherie Kidd to take a lobbying trip to Washington D.C. With the help of Congressman Norm Dicks, she shook free $500,000 from the National Park Service to keep the road open during the winters of 2011 and 2012. Olympic’s leaders said it wasn’t enough, so Kidd led a community fundraising effort that pulled together another $150,000.

“We did music events, dances . and I went door-to-door to banks and stores,” she said. “We did everything to get that money.”

The park service promised to fund full-week access if visitation increased by 45 percent during the two-year period. It didn’t come close, generating less than half the required increase.

Holberg says the park’s measure of success was set too high.

“It was an arbitrary and difficult goal,” he said. “But we did have 15,000 more visitors, and that’s a fairly significant impact.”

But it didn’t offset the ridge’s high costs and staffing needs, said park spokeswoman Barb Maynes.

“Right now, almost all of our available resources on the east side of the park are involved in Hurricane Ridge,” she said. “That’s rangers, law enforcement, emergency responders and a four-person plowing crew.”

The full bill for winter operations is about $500,000 per year. Plowing accounts for about two-thirds of that cost.

The Hurricane Ridge Access Coalition mounted another fundraising campaign in 2014. The goal was $49,000 to support one more day of access each week. The campaign gathered more than 1,000 signatures but only $20,000.

In 2015, the Washington D.C.-based National Park Conservation Association took up the cause. It urged Congress to increase Olympic’s annual funding by $325,000. That would be enough, the nonprofit group estimated, to keep the ridge open all week and possibly support a shuttle service from Port Angeles, alleviating traffic and parking problems. The added 9,000 visitors would boost annual spending in and around the park by $750,000, according to the NPCA.

This effort, too, came to nothing.

A recent park planning process solidified Olympic’s position that the ski and parking areas should remain at their current sizes, and visitor levels should not exceed levels reached more than a decade ago.

Beloved as it is, Oakes knows the ridge’s ski area is a bit of a relic. As frustrations grow over access, he’s not sure how well the ski area will fare in the decade to come.

“Small ski areas used to be everywhere, and in national parks — even Mount Rainier had one,” he said. “But they’re a dying breed.”