Ongoing Troubles Hurt Mt. Bachelor

Locals Not Feeling The Love

By Joseph Friedrichs, 4-09-08

Despite a 164-inch base at West Village Lodge and 525 inches of snowfall this year in the Central-Oregon Cascades, Mt. Bachelor’s top executive spent Tuesday suggesting plans to restore faith in local customers’ opinions about the mountain.

“My commitment to the mountain is 100 percent,” Matt Janney said, as reported by the Bend Bulletin. “On a clear day when the summit is open, there isn’t a better place to ski in the U.S. But there are areas that we need to work on in order to realign ourselves with the community.”

This was Janney’s first winter as the head official at Mt. Bachelor and he readily admits that the mountain needs improvement. Included in the mess on the slopes are ongoing troubles with lifts and annual increases in season-pass prices.

Janney said the company’s mothership, Park City-based Powdr Corp., is likely to invest more than $3 million in hopes of improving the situation at Mt. Bachelor. After all, despite the great snow season, Mt. Bachelor is down 15 percent in customer traffic this year compared to last season.

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By Joseph Friedrichs, 4-09-08 | comments (1) | email story | print story

Comments

By bear bait, 4-09-08

Add the lift tickets to the price of fuel from PDX et al to Bend, and anyone who did not expect this is nuts. This type of economy takes the low end out of the market, and keeps it out until jobs return. You would wonder how many building trades employees in Central Oregon have the dough to spend a day on the mountain, if they are in fact still living in the area. To spend money, you either have to inherit it or earn it. The 2000 empty houses have been built, the money spent. Now you have to entice people to come from far away to bolster skier numbers. Fat chance. There are a 100,000 people out there as I write who wonder how they are ever going to get a plane ride to where they need to go. But there is lots of late season snow and lots of broken down jets sitting on the tarmac.

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