WA Ski Industry Frets W. Cascades Snowpack Off 35% Since 1950

[hatrack]

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A normal Northwest winter may not be good enough for the Pacific Northwest's ski industry, however. Washington's 10 ski areas are still suffering from last winter's disastrous season. The resorts reported their worst year on record, with ski visits down 78 percent from peak levels of 2.1 million visitors in 2001-2002, when resorts reported a base of between 100 and 300 inches of snow.

The best way to overcome the lingering glumness, industry observers day, is snowfall — plenty of it and early on. "It's the best marketing tool ski areas have," says Ralf Garrison, founder of the Mountain Travel Research Project, an industry consultant in Denver. To help calm fears of a repeat, ski areas are offering discounts and other incentives to lure back their core clientele: holders of season passes, many of whom took a financial hit of their own last year forking over hundreds of dollars for just a few hours of skiing.

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As bad as 2004-05 ski season was, the long-term trends are perhaps even more alarming. According to a University of Washington study, rising temperatures have caused the snowpack in the Cascades to fall an average 35 percent since 1950, and the snowpack is expected to thaw further, to less than half its 20th-century levels, by 2050. The same study predicts the length of a ski season at the Summit at Snoqualmie, whose base elevation is about 3,000 feet, could decline 28 percent by 2025. "Last winter came as a shock to a lot of people, but unfortunately it's what winter is increasingly going to look like," said the study's author, Alan Hamlet, a research scientist at UW's Climate Impacts Group.

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002586210_skiresorts27.html

[villager]

1. wonder how many of those resort owners routinely vote Republican?

I guess this is a "free market consequence" of their actions...

[NNadir]

2. A lot of them I'd guess.

Skiing is a wonderful, if big money sport. I will miss it. (I got married on a ski trip.)

But let's make no mistake, the people who will suffer the most from global climate change are not the wealthy. It is the poor who will suffer, as we see this hurricane season in Central America and the portions of the United States that are already third world.