Skier Visits by Area

Someone on this list posted Alberta skier visits, and I was inclined to search online for as many areas as I could find. In general it was easy to get aggregate totals by country or sometimes state. It's a more tedious process to get individual areas, and I also found out that areas on private land are not required to release that info. Thus for Park City the Chamber of Commerce releases a total for all 3 areas (~1.5M) but no breakdown.

http://www.onthesnow.com/news/europe/2002-11-29.html
France 57.6M, Austria 56M, USA 52.2M, Japan 52M, Italy 37M, Canada 17M, Switzerland 17M

http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa2002/media_...releases/2003/kottke_preliminary_rpt_0203.pdf

The End 2003 Kottke Season Survey is interesting reading and has regional, time-of-season breakdowns and many other stats.

Other sites:

http://www.alpinemedia.co.nz/skiAreas.html NZ skierdays and area open days for 2001 The 7 major areas do about 1.1M combined
http://travel.utah.gov/skierdays.html Utah total skierdays last 10 seasons ~3M
http://www.tosv.com/2001/CompPlan/TOSV3.pdf Colorado top 10 1984-1997
http://travel.utah.gov/ski_profile_99-00.pdf Utah visitor survey 1999-2000

Other misc. skier day totals:
Aspen/Snowmass 2001 1.2M
Maine 1.3M
Jackson Hole 340-390K, ~550K including Targhee and Snow King
Telluride 370K
New Mexico 1M: Taos 250K, Apache 209K
Sun Valley 380-406K
1995-96: Vail + Beaver Creek 2.2M, Key, Breck, A-Basin 2.6M
Colorado 11.6M
Lake Tahoe 3.8M 1994-95
2001: Big Sky 320K, Bridger 158-170K
Durango 320K, Wolf Creek 187K
Crested Butte ~500K
NH+VT ~6M

Thanks for the statistics and the references, Tony... and if everyone here find some infos about the ski visits of ski areas anywhere in USA or Canada, please send them here... it's always a great thing to compare the numbers. Actually, for our ski areas, all I can say is 585K+ for Bromont (about 1-2 weeks before the end of season) and 56K (not a dial-up connection) for Mt Gleason (which is incredible, considering the tiny size of the ski area). <BR> <BR> <BR>I have the numbers for American skiing company ski areas, for 2001-02 (I think Max put them on another thread, but to concentrate the datas here...) <BR> <BR>Killington / Pico : 953K <BR>Sunday River : 521K <BR>Snow/Haystack : 472K <BR>Sugarloaf : 331K <BR>Attitash : 190K <BR>The Canyons : 288K <BR>Steamboat : 1001K <BR>Heavenly : 832K

Thanks for the info Tony, <BR> <BR>In 1988 when I did the paper on the ski industry, I was also able to get aggregated numbers per region, type of ski area (3 or 4 categories). However like I mentioned earlier, numbers per resort we're a guarded secret.

Forgot to mentioned, it was for Quebec only.

What are total Quebec skier days? I'm guessing a fairly big number, more than Vermont, maybe more than California or any U.S. state other than Colorado. Why? From the earlier post Alberta is under 2M. Even with Whistler's 2M I suspect B.C. is 5-6M. So Quebec must have close to half of Canada's 17M? The comments here on FTO indicate an unusually large number of smaller areas still thriving. Contrast to the large number listed in NELSAP that I saw in the Vermont Ski Museum exhibit this March.

Tony, it's funny that you ask the question now, as we got the numbers today !! <BR> <BR>Quebec got 6,9 millions of ski visits last winter <BR>Ontario : 3,2M <BR>Atlantic : 570K <BR>BC : 5,5M <BR>Alberta : 2,4M <BR>Prairies : 220K <BR> <BR>Total : 18,8M ski visits = 37% for Quebec. <BR> <BR>Quebec = less and less little ski areas. There is hundreds of lost ski areas in the Province (but NELSAP don't want to talk of them... too much effort for a website not really known in Quebec, I guess). <BR> <BR>There is about 85 ski areas in the province (tough to be sure of the exact number). Only 10 of them have more than 1300' high, though and there may be 30 over 1000' high. Most of the ski areas have between 500 and 1000' high. In the last 10 years, almost all the less high ski areas closed, as the skiers don't want to pay for t-bars anymore. Very few ski areas under 100 meters high (328') are still open. (There is only Mt Bellevue downtown Sherbrooke, in the very wide Montreal region, with 250' high). <BR> <BR>As I always say, the big ski areas are generally too much crowded and to really discover the charm of the province, you better go to the mid-size ski areas, as they often offer the greatest skiing, especially for the expert skiers !

As seen on a press release in the news section, here are the Canadian skier days by province for the last season: <BR> <BR>Québec: 6,900,000 <BR>British Columbia: 5,500,000 <BR>Ontario: 3,200,000 <BR>Alberta: 2,400,000 <BR>Nova Scotia + PEI + Newfoundland & L + New Brunswick: 570,000 <BR>Manitoba & Saskatchewan: 220,000 <BR> <BR>It is true that Québec has a lot of small ski areas. This is probably due to the fact that the climate allows smaller ski areas to operate long enough to cover costs. There also exists some quite unique "urban ski areas" in certain cities, such as Bellevue (Sherbrooke), St-Raymond (Québec), Villa Saguenay (Alma) or Mont Bélu (Jonquière). Montreal used to have one, too, on the Mont Royal. <BR> <BR>There are over 70 ski areas in operation in Québec.

Sorry for the repeat in my message.... Frank hadn't posted when I started replying...

I would add Mt Fortin in Jonquière (Mt Bélu is at La Baie... anyway, I think that all those cities are now part of "Saguenay" city.) <BR> <BR>I wouldn't compare too much the "Lac des Castors" with Mt Bélu, though <IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=""> (Mt Bélu is just 10x higher than the lac des castors ski hill). (I'm sure the view is also 10x more interesting, with the "Baie des Haha" right in front off... should be something like a tiny "Le Massif", for the view and it's just beside downtown ! <BR> <BR>You're right for the fact that the ski areas can operate enough long, without spending too much. Once again I think to Mt Alta which remains open until mid-april each year while they don't make snow. The ski areas don't have huge snowfalls, but as it's almost always below freezing, it just melts in april. <BR> <BR>Back to my work on "accountancy theory" arggggghhhh !

As I mentioned in my University term-paper in 1988 on the logic of localization (Geography). Mountain and climate are not the major factor that explain the existance of Ski Areas. <BR> <BR>Many of the Quebec ski areas are located in the Laurentians, which extend for a 30 to 90 minutes north of Montreal. These are not the biggest mountain (Townships are bigger and almost as close), but they are more accessible. The train in the 30s followed by the autoroute in the early 70s. Many small towns had their ski lifts (a bit like Vermont). <BR> <BR>Charlevoix and Gaspe Peninsula have the biggest mountains in Quebec, with the exception of the Torngats in the High North. Ski areas in the Charlevoix: only 2, even if the region it is located between 30 to 60 minutes from Quebec City. Although it is fairly close, the region has very small population and might be considered as remote and not easily accessible not to long ago. For the Gaspe, I think the number of ski areas is something like 6 or 7, and not big areas. <BR> <BR>In the late 70s Quebec had 110 ski areas, the Montreal Metropolitain Area had probably something like 9 or 10. Now only the two further out remain: Rigaud and Mt St.Bruno. <BR> <BR>Although on the same mountain, Mont Royal had two ski areas (sic). University of Montreal and Lac des Castors. Don't laugh about the Lac des Castors, I started skiing there with leather and lace ski-boots in the late 60s. I went back with my daughter after getting her skis when she was 3yr olds (3 yr ago), my mother's thought the t-bar was still working. You should've seen us on skis, pushing and carrying my daughter from the parking between the trees all the way to the bottom of the old lift (ouf). <BR> <BR>No Frank, I didn't enter this day in my stats.

LOL (for the day in the stats !!) <BR> <BR>I don't know for me... probably not, as I didn't count my last day on the Loup-Garou canyon, in June. (not enough vertical skied for an official ski day, but it counted for the season's length) <BR> <BR>True for the train in the Laurentians, this is the biggest reason why it existed something like 75 ski hills, just in the Laurentians. <BR> <BR>Very true for Charlevoix and the Gaspesia. I don't know if the 3rd phase will be built, at Mt Restigouche, but if yes, I think it should reach 1400' to 1500'. This remains quite less high than the Gaspesian Park or the Grands Jardins Park, but they're protected, so it would be tough to build some ski areas there ! <BR> <BR>It remains sad that there is nothing anymore near Montreal, except the little MSB (Rigaud is quite far). I imagine me during my breaks in winter to go spend few runs at the university hill... would have been quite cool !