Mt. Bachelor to refocus on spring skiing

The hours at Mt. Bachelor were short when I skied there May 3-4, 1990, so the long-standing policy may well have been to shorten hours at the same time lift operations were cut back. Not sure if April 20 has been the typical cutback date; I think Northwest was open weekends to first weekend of May in a couple of big years.

Under Dave McCoy Mammoth ran everything through last weekend of April, which coincidentally tends to be a big tourism weekend because of opening of Eastern Sierra fishing season. Since Intrawest last full op weekend appears to be later of 3rd weekend in April or weekend after Easter.

Mammoth's commitment to the Memorial Day and beyond season seems just as strong as under McCoy. While they require Broadway to be skiable, Broadway has a snowmaking base that keeps it open longer. And Mammoth expends considerable effort building an upper mountain terrain park for just the few weeks after the one near Main Lodge melts out. There were more skier-packed lines off the top in June/July of 2005 and 2006 than in the big years of the 80's and 90's, probably due to chair 23 being open more.
 
egieszl":1tttmxp0 said:
Also, screw the Bend locals... Locals aren't the bread and butter of a ski resort operation and spring operations often eat away at the bottom line.
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Thanks for the kind words egieszl, but obviously you don't understand our local history and how Bend fits into the equation. Mt Bachelor has always been a community ski area, founded at a very modest level to provide recreation to the nearby mill town. As they grew they allowed a for-profit outside organization, Mt Bachelor Ski Education Foundation, run their Alpine, Nordic and now Snowboarding youth and adult programs rather than have the ski area do it. The ski area was always very closely tied to Bend, now a small city of over 80,000 only 22 miles away. Would you ignore a town of this size and wealth, right in your backyard, to favor visitors who live hours away? Keep in mind we are in a very isolated location, separated by passes from the next closest major metropolitan area nearly three hours away on a good day. The skiers in Portland and Seattle have to drive right by some pretty respectable ski areas (Crystal Mt, Mt Hood Meadows, Stevens Pass and the year-round skiing at Timberline) to get here. I know the snow surfaces and fun factor here can be consistantly great, but we do have really awful weather, always windy and stormy, rime crusted on your goggles, parked in the Jet Stream issues to deal with. For that reason I don't ever see Mt Bachelor as a serious winter destination for most skiing and snowboarding travelers.
This season I spent some serious dough to ski here. I bought four Alpine passes ($799, $799, $349, $249), two Nordic Passes ($240, $240), two season lockers ($225, $225) and a bus pass ($125). Sure the ski area lowered prices on individual passes but they discontinued the family pass so now it costs me more money to buy passes for the entire family. This is before I purchase gear in the sport shop, coffees, beers, lunches, etc. Oh yeah, what about our visiting friends and family who stay at our house, so they can go skiing nearby. Why don't you consider me "bread and butter"??? Jeez dude, wake up!
As for spring skiing not adding to the bottom line, of course it doesn't. But don't go raising prices for locals, reducing services and then closing ridiculously early on a banner year, like last season. We are justly famous for our corn, so get with the program Powdr.
As for anyone out there who is considering a late trip, we continue to be blessed with good luck lately. I had another great powder day today with 15" new since yesterday afternoon. They are reporting a 158" base and 465" season total. The snowy pattern is expected to last for a few more weeks at least...
Just so you don't think I'm a total grouch, I do have to report that I think the addition of Dave Rathbun, the new President and GM, has been a good thing for this ski area. He had some huge challenges coming in and most of us locals feel the changes have made a big difference. We had an ice and wind storm in January that would have crippled any other area but they handled it very professionally.
 
I think I should note that I skied Mt. Bachelor the last week of June some 20 years ago. Like Mammoth it has awesome spring skiing conditions. I should also note that I was probably one of 25 people on the mountain when I skied there.

I also think it is retarded for Mt. Bachelor to not stay open until Memorial Day, but I think their decision to close sooner has more to do with changes in the industry than it does with Powdr Corp. The number of die-hard skiers who ski in the fringe seasons are nearly gone. The cost to operate is a lot higher and the cost to participate a lot higher as well. Mt. Bachelor is not the only area in the US to shorten their season. Keystone and Killington don't open in October anymore. Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley close earlier than before.

I have read the stories about Powdr Corp and their operation of Mt. Bachelor and Killington. I think the lift operations and maintenance are bigger issues.

Tony, like you I've kept extensive written records or shall I say written snow reports on Mammoth and Southern California ski areas. I beg to differ on Mammoth's operations in the McCoy era. You're absolutely correct that they used to on a good snow year run Chair 9 in May, but the closing of Canyon Lodge and Eagle Lodge under Intrawest and current management is now later than it ever was under McCoy. There were exceptions, but the consistency was never there like it is now. This year's April 19 closing is just a few days earlier simply because of how the calendar falls this year.

Under McCoy, operations were based on snow conditions and school holidays. If Easter fell in March and the snow year was average, Canyon Lodge might cease operations in early April. I much prefer the current consistency. The loss of Chair 9 in May is not that big of a loss for a mountain that still operates a majority of their terrain on weekends.
 
Under McCoy, operations were based on snow conditions and school holidays. If Easter fell in March and the snow year was average, Canyon Lodge might cease operations in early April.
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I looked up my records and to some surprise there were a couple of earlier than expected closings of Canyon. It was closed when I skied 4/19-21/1985 and 4/16-17/1988, both cases 2 weeks after Easter. Canyon was open 4/25-26/1981 in a low snow year because Easter was the 19th.

As I've said before I have no complaints on balance about Mammoth's current mountain ops or spring operations. Since I believe Bachelor's corn/spring snow preservation to be even better than Mammoth's, I'm inclined to judge it by Mammoth's standards.
 
Lifts are open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily servicing a base of 7.5-12.5 feet of snow.
20 runs were groomed last night leaving 187 acres of fresh corduroy. The following lifts are expected to operate out of Main Lodge today: Broadway Express, Stump Alley Express, Face Lift Express, Discovery Chair and the Upper and Lower Panorama Gondola.
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Mammoth's lifts are cut back starting today, but note the hours are not yet.
 
Rather than "refocus" on spring skiing perhaps they would be better refocusing on opening all lifts, on time in Spring Break on a day with not a cloud in the sky.

As an international guest, who will write about his trip, I think its rediculous that it was 11am before the Outback and Northwest lifts were opened and 12pm before the Summit chair was spinning. To spend 20 minutes in the singles line to ski the Pine Martin Express is bad enough, to pay a full price ticket with so little open is even worse.

Rant over :dead horse:

On a positive note, the hash browns, gravy and 3 sausages that were buried beneath the mound was fantastic 8)
 
hmmm... when chair five doesn't run do the runs off of five get much traffic or can you get a nice corn run in there down to ch 2?
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Definitely, and they groom Comeback to make it easy to get back to 2. But you do want them to run chairs 5 and 23 sometimes (which they will on weekends for a while in a year like this) for skier compaction of the snow and to prevent suncupping.

I'd be more interested in details from q's day at Mt. Bachelor. The lift delay problems he has described are supposed to have been improved this season. Mt. Bachelor does have vicious weather in terms of wind exposure. And unlike Mammoth where most of the lifts are on the leeward side, Outback and Northwest are on the windward side and Summit has crosswinds. Thus you can get a lot of ice riming. This is the usual reason for chair delays at Mt. Baldy also.

Schubwa could perhaps also comment on Mt. Bachelor's weather during q's timeframe.
 
Mammoth closing hours are cut back to 3PM as of May 4. This is fairly normal. I've seen Memorial Days with 3PM closing, though it can be sooner if the snowpack is thin like 2007 or if it's been very warm for awhile.
 
I just got Mt. Bachelor's final snow stats for 2008-09, an impressive 527 inches.

I also got some more detail info on the "improved spring skiing." So in fairness I'll pass those along here. On the NW side of Summit there is a second cut (halfway up Northwest) through the trees for a summer road that comes all the way around to the bottom of Pine Marten. This spring they plowed that road, thus opening up most of the backside corn that I've criticized closing down with the Northwest lift. =D> On the east side of Summit you need to cut back fairly early once Sunrise is closed. However, they do run Skyliner and plan to cut a road allowing comeback access to that chair for spring in the future. I asked why they run Skyliner instead of Sunrise, and the reason is that Mt. Bachelor's terrain park is on Skyliner.

I was pleased to get the above details. There's a tremendous amount of terrain accessible with those 3 lifts and the 2 comeback roads. I hope Schubwa will chime in with eyewitness comments. I still believe that the closing time should be phased in like Mammoth rather than cut all the way to 1:30PM after the 3rd weekend of April. Nonetheless you can ski 25-30K by 1:30 at Bachelor easily when the snow is good.
 
The third page of that article mentions some of the men being at Mammoth for 10 days starting May 18. Which is the day after Bachelor closed.
 
Tony Crocker":34kmqber said:
The third page of that article mentions some of the men being at Mammoth for 10 days starting May 18. Which is the day after Bachelor closed.
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3rd page? It should be just one page posted on May 27th. There is a different article about the speed teams training at Mammoth posted on May 19th... but with a different set of skiers (mostly A & B teamers @Mammoth vs D team at Bachelor).
 
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