October 1980 issue

The Winter That Wasn't

by Carola Vyhnak

It's mid-January, a month before the opening of the 1980 Winter Olympics, and everything is starting to fall into place at Lake Placid. Everything that is, except the snow. Twelve hundred athletes from around the world are about to descend on the tiny village in northern New York State where snow in January is normally as sure as sun in summer. But the great Snowmaker in the sky has decided to take a holiday. Indefinitely.

Enter the largest snow-making operation the world has ever seen. For the next three weeks, snow guns work around the clock building mounds of the stuff on Whiteface Mountain and in an empty field nearby, from which trucks carry it to cross-country and biathalon trails, covering 15 miles witha 12-foot wide, one-foot-deep blanket.

"We hoped for the best and prepared for the worst," explained sports director Ray Pratt after the athletes had come and gone. "And everything clicked, no thanks to Mother Nature'.

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For just about everyone in the ski world, 1979-80 will be remembered as the winter that wasn't. In the east especially, skiers and ski businessmen are still groaning about what was probably the mildest, most snowless winter in over a century. And even in the west, where things started slowly but in some areas developed into a gang-buster season, the effects are being felt.

Eastern slopes remained bare for much of the season, keeping thousands of skiers at home, forcing some areas to close their doors, and leaving suppliers and retailers with piles of unsold equipment. Temperatures during the critical weeks of late December and early January ran seven degrees above the average for that time of the year, usually about minus eight degrees Celsius. In Quebec City, which is usually hard to find in December without a good map and a shovel, snowfall amounted to less than two-thirds the yearly average of 327 centimeters. Montreal fared even worse, with only 93 centimeters of its expected 240.

"Those with artificial snow pulled in some skiers - maybe 50% of what they would normally get," explained Ben Fuller, co-ordinator of Ski East, an organization that represents the hard-hit Eastern Townships of Quebec. "But nobody operated 100%. And the smaller resorts elsewhere with no snowmaking just had to close up after only 14 days of operation."

Ontario's ski resorts fared a little better. Blue Mountain netted most of the south's skiers thanks to a $3 million snowmaking system, and the many private clubs in the Collingwood area benefited from the fact that they had collected their membership dues before the season got rolling. Limping, rather.

Kathy Keely, a life-long skier and contributor to Ski Canada jokingly refers to her experience last winter as "the year of the $90 run" because the $180 she contributed to the coffers of Collingwood's Craigleith Ski Club resulted in precisely two runs down its snow-starved slopes. "It was the worse skiing I've ever seen", she recalls. "There wasn't even an inch of snow by the side of the hill. My skis were just obliterated."

Knute Dohnberg of the Ontario Ski Resort Operators' Association figures much of the damage was psychological. "The first weekend in December was good but then the thaw struck and it was bad until mid-January. There was a lot of rain and everybody was washed out. That's what killed us , because it put the coup de grace on the psyche of the skier. Even though it got colder in January, everybody was still thinking no snow and they just didn't come out."

The battle with the obstinate Ontario skier reached a high point in late January when Carl Whittier of Candy Mountain, located in the snow-blessed northland near Thunder Bay, flew into Toronto with a suitcase full of snow in an attempt to promote his hill.

Average temperatures in the west ran the gamut from 10 above to 10 below, but were rarely normal. All the same, skiers had a good season despite the balmy December that seems to have afflicted all areas of the country. Sunshine Village's rocky start was more due to problems with its $10 million gondola than the weather; Whistler racked up a record 400,000-skier year - a 30 per cent increase over last year - mainly because it received over double its usual snowfall. And then there were all those easterners who came west in search of a week or two away from the rocks. Although sources in the travel business say the Alberta areas didn't reap the same benfit, they experienced a bountiful season all the same.

It wasn't just the lack of snow that contributed to the winter that wasn't, although that alone was enough to destroy the best-laid plans of skiers throughout the east, computerized snow-making notwithstanding. High interest rates, high unemployment and a sluggish economy all contributed to what trade analyst Jim Rennie calls "the worst possible set of circumstances" for the ski business across the country. "The most consoling aspect of the whole thing", he says, "is that this year can't be any worse."

And the ski business has another ace up its sleevethat should prove as effective in protecting the industry as any insurance policy. It's the skier himself. He may grumble a bit about lost opportunity, but he's not about to give up the sport because of one lousy winter. Fred Korman, owner of Quebec's Owl's Head, which suffered its worse business in 15 years last winter, sounds the keynote in this respect: "We never had such a good year for booking",he says. "Those who cancelled automatically rebooked for next year. It was such a freak season I don't think anybody figures it can repeat itself. We're not slowing down a bit."