On the eve of opening day at Mount Hood Meadows, the ski resort sounded like a construction site.
A front-end loader scooped snow from the parking lot, its over-sized tire chains chinking as it crossed the pavement and emptied its load into a rubber-tracked dump truck. After a few more scoops, both machines rumbled toward a nearby chairlift to drop their haul.
In the ski industry, they call this “snow harvesting”: Moving snow from the parking lots to the lower lifts and slopes so people can start skiing sooner.
“We can get 2 to 4 inches of snow on this parking lot and have enough snow to build the ramps we need in the lower base area,” said Meadows communications director Dave Tragethon. “That connects people to the upper mountain where we have more than enough snow.”
In recent weeks, there’s been no shortage of snow at Meadows — it just keeps coming.
But after several years of warm winters and low snow, the resort no longer counts on big storms to launch the ski season. It’s spent big bucks on snow harvesting equipment and even built a giant trailer for towing snow up the slopes on a snowcat.
“Last year, had we not harvested the November snow, we wouldn’t have been able to be open for Christmas,” Tragethon said. “We’re literally talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in our ability to snow harvest, but if that’s what’s required to get our season underway — and to actually make our season, like last year — it’s a very good investment.”
Ski resorts across the Northwest are adopting business practices that make them better prepared for the low-snow years predicted to come with climate change.
In addition to snow harvesting, they’ve added snow-making equipment, redesigned their lifts and cleared brush from the slopes so they don’t need as much snow cover. They’ve also broadened year-round offerings like mountain biking to make up for shorter ski seasons.
“Are they so worried they’re getting out of the business? No,” said John Gifford, president of the Pacific Northwest Ski Area Association. “Are they looking at ways of harvesting or making snow? Yes. If they don’t have snow, they don’t have operations.”
A dress rehearsal
Climate scientists say recent years have been a “dress rehearsal” for the warmer winters to come with climate change.
Across the Northwest, Gifford says, ski resorts have adapted. Many, including Washington’s Crystal Mountain and Stevens Pass and Oregon’s Mount Bachelor, started offering off-season mountain biking within the last five years.
“The first thing people are looking at as well as being creative in moving snow around is they want to figure out how to keep their business going,” he said.
Not all ski area operators agree the recent warm spell is a preview of climate change — as opposed to just another cyclical weather pattern they’ve seen in the past.
“There’s some debate about climate change,” Gifford said. “I don’t think anybody believes the climate isn’t changing. It’s just to what degree: How and when is it happening.”
Elevation is key
Finding higher terrain may be the key to future snow sports, according to Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute.
At higher elevations, he says, temperatures are cold enough that a couple degrees of warming doesn’t change snow into rain. That means ski resorts could experience different effects of climate change depending on their elevation.
Last year, warmer winter temperatures meant there was very little snow below 5,000 feet. He says that’s what climate models predict for the average winter by the 2040s.
“So ski resorts like Bachelor with a very high base elevation were relatively fine because most of the precipitation was falling as snow up that high, but at lower elevations most of the precipitation was falling as rain,” he said.
In really cold locations like the top of Mount Hood, he says, global warming could actually mean more snow because the atmosphere will have more moisture and the snow will fall heavier. But for most locations – particularly in the mild climate of the Pacific Northwest – more moisture will mean less snow.
Mote is currently updating a study that found declining mountain snow pack in 70 percent of the Western U.S. locations scientists observed from 1916-1997.
“The largest decreases are at lower elevations at very mild temperatures where you’d expect a transition from snowfall to rainfall with a little bit of warming,” he said. ‘We’re not just counting on mother nature.’
The base of Mt. Hood Skibowl resort sits at about 3,600 feet. So it doesn’t have elevation on its side Instead, it has eight snow guns and a variety of year-round activities for people to enjoy regardless how much snow falls.
