Winter of '06-'07 is a no-show

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

By Jake Nichols

In every coffee shop, gin joint, office cubicle and cell phone chat, the talk is the same: Where is the snow? Who stole our winter? In a valley that has grown accustomed to being blessed early and often with the white stuff that turns hills and dales and cash registers green come spring, December was merely so-so.

January was brutal.

Day after day, temperatures remained so bone-chillingly low that resort owners’ hopes were the only thing melting. Snow guns worked ’round the clock, but Mother Nature’s contribution was scant. Snowfall totals and daily highs looked the same: zero.

Then, as if prayers were answered, the January thaw came in February and – careful what you wish for – the bizarre Chinook winds meltdown lay bare the buttes and had locals thinking bikes over bumps.

How hard has this winter sucked? Is it fair to compare it to last year’s perfect storm of a ski season? The final year of the tram and day after day of dump after dump made the winter of ’05-06 one to remember, while the season of ’06-07 is the one Old Man Winter forgot.

BENT BUT NOT BROKE
Summer ended abruptly. October was a wet one. By November, dreams of ski turns were not far off for Snow King Area manager Jim Sullivan, whose resort targets Thanksgiving Day as the ideal opening date. Eight weeks later, no one at Snow King is giving thanks.

“The visitors just weren’t here compared to other years,” said Sullivan, who nevertheless said the Town Hill is down a little bit, but not discouragingly so. “We saw the same thing in 1979 and 1985. Without the big snow-making we added in 1993 and machine-made snow, we would be dead in the water.”

Snow King has been lucky compared to other resorts. Sun Valley is at 71 percent of normal snowfall. Truckee, Calif., normally the snowiest place in the nation, is suffering through its driest winter in decades. And Bridger Bowl in Bozeman, Mont., cancelled a collegiate ski race when officials cited lack of snow needed to pull it off.

At Grand Targhee, skier days have been off as well. The resort that thinks so much of its 43 feet of annual snow that it guarantees it has been limping through this season. As of Feb. 11, the ’Ghee had 245 inches of snow, just under half of average at the halfway point in the season.

“There are always twists and turns and surprises when your business depends on the weather,” said Susie Barnett-Bushong, VP of marketing at Targhee. “January can be an off month for many resorts, but it is one of our best, historically. January started slow, Martin Luther King Day weekend was very quiet, and we ended up two percent off from last January.”

Always the optimist, Barnett-Bushong found the bright side: “At least the high pressure of January made for good travel, clear roads. … we always seemed to get a dump when we needed it, even though it wasn’t every other day.”

At the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, a decent December was followed by a freeze so deep it squeezed moisture from the air and skiers from the lifts.

JHMR communications director Anna Olson said the resort got just 34 inches in January, less than half of what’s normal. “That and the cold affected our destination guests as well as the locals,” she said. “Paid skier days were down 17 percent from last January. We took a hit in local skier days.”

Only the vitality of the Village made guests forget conditions. “Steep & Deep” camps and numerous group packages helped the resort weather the non-storms of January, and, despite icy conditions, the resort received no complaints from visitor exit polls tabulated by the Chamber of Commerce.

While locals were calling the Village a ghost town in January, START bus ridership was at an all-time high. The Village run, in particular, was up one percent over January 2006, carting out 71,641 able-bodied skiers and boarders for the month. Perhaps, the few locals who headed to the Vill simply couldn’t start their cars.

DOMINO EFFECT
The lackluster start of the season had a domino effect on several area businesses including Wyoming Landscapers, which depends on snowplow contracts to employ a crew of 14.

“We’re getting murdered here,” said owner Nick Orsillo. “It’s not just us but we haven’t bought hardly any salt or sand, so that hurts Evans. Tire Factory isn’t getting our business, our mechanic is bored, and we have bought barely any fuel, and Shervin’s feels that.” Orsillo said he will feel lucky to break even this winter.

The Jackson Hole Shriners Club Cutter Races, the crown jewel of the typically crazy-busy Presidents Day Weekend, were cancelled for the first time in recent memory after the track could not be readied due to poor conditions.

“It was just going to be too expensive to have Evans fill in a sand track,” Hal Johnson said.

Gear and ski shops report mixed winter reviews. Teton Village Sports felt the chill back in December. “Our Christmas was hurt a bit with all the cancelled flights out of Denver,” said co-owner Skip Cohen, “but even with skier days down here and no tram, no snow, we are doing pretty good given the circumstances.”

When rentals and ski sales went soft for TVS, apparel sold as tourists arrived mountainside in January terribly underdressed for the sub-zero temps. In fact, TVS had its second best January in 40 years of operation.

“There has been a long-term trend of vibrancy in the Village,” Cohen said. “The economy here is really good, and even though the business has a lot of variables … we are still doing okay considering the circumstances.”

On the frontline, retailers like ski shops and mountain resorts have been taking it on the chin, but Skinny Skis, which deals mainly in cross country and skate skiing products, has found the upside in a lousy downhill season.

“We are sometimes an anomaly,” said Skinny Skis co-owner Phil Leeds. “Last year was reasonably good, but this year has been a little better. People are switching to cross country and skate skiing this winter, with less snow at the resorts and in the hills of the backcountry. The skate skis didn’t sell well last year by comparison.”

HELP FROM LOCALS
Like most area retailers, Leeds points to loyal locals as reason for his success. “Locals are outdoor people,” he said. “They are going to do stuff regardless, and thank God for that.”

“Locals have helped out,” agreed Mattie Sheafor-Hond of Teton Mountaineering, “with the warm up, the spring merchandise is moving now.”

“We rely so much on the locals,” added Hoback Sports owner Hernando Pardo, “we are feeling the effects of lack of snow. We are down 10 percent from last January. This is the hand dealt to us and we have to play it. There is no need to panic. We’re all in the same boat.”

Pardo has owned Hoback Sports for 10 years and has been involved in the ski industry since 1980. He remembers the down times of the early ’80s and the drought of ’76, “when all of the ski shops had to go to the bank and refinance,” he said.

“You have to be smart when the weather doesn’t cooperate,” Pardo said. “You have to watch your reorders. We aren’t doing many reorders right now. Last season, with the big snows, we sold out of fat skis and had to reorder. Fat skis don’t do as well without the snow.”

Pardo remains optimistic, however. “When some things go stale, others come in … like bikes. Bike sales have been up when it started warming after the cold spell. We will still have a Presidents Day sale and the discounts will be deeper this year. We’ll see it through and we’ll be smiling come spring.”

They’re already smiling at Edge Sports. Jared Rogers opened the small shop at the five-way in 1997, the winter it snowed and kept snowing. Still, this cold, dry January of 2007 was his second best ever.

“January was our best year for repairs and tuning in five years,” Rogers said. “People are probably dinging up their stuff. As far as retail, business is really tied in to weather. Europeans are down this winter, but we sold three bikes in January and that helped.”

Snowmobiling outfits are all reporting dismal Januarys — after the holiday rush, no one was willing to brave sub-zero temperatures on a sled — but park visitation to Yellowstone remains strong this year.

Jeff Lutz, owner and operator of Wyoming Adventures, saw such forbidding bookings for January he had to let some guides go. “People were still going into the parks, but maybe less trips to the Gros Ventre, for sure.”

The February warm up, however, has sent Lutz scrambling to get his guides back for what he calls a “crazy pickup in bookings.”

OTHER WINNER AND LOSERS
Depressing weather and stone cold ski conditions were enough to drive anyone to the bottle. Make that everyone.

“We were busy in January,” West Side Wine & Spirits manager John Coakley said. “Last January was great, but this January was our busiest ever — less people, but more money.”

Main Event, the book, music and video rental store on West Broadway, also benefited from conditions that made outdoor activity painful. “We are up over last year 15 percent,” owner Thana Saycocie said, “with book sales doing especially well.”

Businesses on the Town Square, more dependent on foot traffic, have fared less well. Steve Ashley at Valley Books bore witness to that, as did Steve Deyholos at Ripleys Believe It or Not.

“There are just not as many people walking around,” Deyholos said.
And by the numbers, the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce agrees. Phone contacts and mail requests are down from last winter, with only e-mails showing an increase in January ’07 over last. Perhaps Internet users were just wondering if Jackson Holers were still alive.

A strong indicator of tourist foot traffic on the Square is Visitor Center trips, which were down 37 percent in December when inbound plane traffic was brought to a virtual halt by Colorado storms. January’s visitation was also down from last year by over 500 guests.
Low deplanement at the Jackson Hole Airport in December was murderous on Teton Village lodging enterprises. After a strong start to December, hotels in the Village were operating at half their numbers for 2005, according to the Chamber.

When the three-week cold snap hit, Village hotels were at 54 to 65 percent occupancy, compared to January of 2006 when they remained at 78 to 98 percent capacity. Downtown hoteliers have seen down numbers as well, but not nearly as bad.

“The Town Square area retail and lodging properties were down slightly to significantly, but it varies widely with who you ask,” said Tim O’Donohue, executive director of Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

“Compared to the banner year in ’06, this winter has been not as good, of course, but when you compare this past January with ’05, only about half the businesses were down. The lack of snow is hurting us, but last year is an unfair comparison.”

Surprisingly, though, Jackson retailers are showing more resilience toward weather conditions and the tourist dollar.

“Business, overall, is not that reliant on weather,” O’Donohue said, adding that the buying power of locals has helped sustain downtown businesses over the dollar drought.
So some have boomed while others have busted.

Blue Sky’s Mark Uptain said this cold January was good for plumbers, for example, as they have been going non-stop fixing frozen and broken pipes. And just try to get a heating guy to fix your HVAC; you’re looking at a four- to six-week wait for Delcon, said Jackson businessman Greg Prugh.

If only the brave and the stupid ventured out in January, that would explain how Kris Shean was able to sell ice to Eskimos. The owner of the local Häagen-Dazs scoop shop remained open for winter for the fourth year in a row and it has paid off.

Despite losing the afternoon coffee crowd from GAP employees and admitting “it was pretty quiet over the cold days,” Shean enjoyed her best January ever.

And the future? Well … Planet Jackson Hole’s meteorologist Jim Woodmencey says February is the driest month of the year, statistically, at one inch of precipitation on average.

There’s always golf season.
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Winter of '06-'07 is a no-show | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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