Nature’s Whitewash Paints a Brighter Scene for Resorts

The ominous, black clouds that swept over the Southland on Tuesday gave way to a spectacular blue sky Wednesday morning, and glistening beneath the morning sun in the local mountains was a beautiful blanket of snow.

So, it appears there will be a white winter after all. Some folks were beginning to wonder. Those who run the smaller ski resorts were wondering about other things as well, such as how they were going to pay their bills.

And while that’s still going to be tough, they’re not wasting any time trying to get up and running by this morning, or by Saturday at the latest, because the recent snow won’t last long--and who knows when we’ll get any more?

“Epic,” is how John Koulouris described the skiing at Mt. Baldy, which went from near nothing to more than three feet of incredibly light powder in some places, enabling the resort to open all its terrain--even the black-diamond runs beneath Chair 1.

“The town of Mount Baldy got 18 inches of snow, and that’s only at 4,000 feet,” spokesman Koulouris added. “We had more than two feet in our [ski area] parking lot.”

To the east, in the San Bernardino Mountains, Judi Bowers at Big Bear Mountain exclaimed, “The weather pattern has finally changed to include our neck of the woods.” And the result was eight to 14 inches of powder on top of a solid base of man-made snow.

And it has been cold enough to keep snow-blowers there and at nearby Snow Summit and Snow Valley operating day and night for most of this week.

For those with no snow-making capabilities, the only drawback of the blizzard was that the snow might have been too light.

“If I tried packing it with the [snow] cat, I’d sink right down to the dirt,” said Dave Wilson, general manager at Big Air Winter Park in Green Valley, which is unable to open despite 18 inches of powder.

In the eastern San Gabriel range, at Mountain High, skiers are welcoming real snow, though they have had pretty good skiing on man-made snow for several weeks.

“I can have just as much fun skiing on the man-made stuff, but this adds to the ambience of being able to look around and everything you see is white,” said Jim Wilkins, a San Bernardino County fireman based in Wrightwood. “Now Pine Mountain is white instead of brown. We can see Baldy and it’s finally white. We can look out across the desert and see the Tehachapis. . . . “

Mountain High received more than two feet of powder and is operating at 100% at its East and West resorts. Nearby Ski Sunrise reports 12 to 18 inches of snow and has a rope tow open for beginners and one chair servicing intermediate skiers.

To the west, Mt. Waterman alongside Angeles Crest Highway reports it got three feet of snow and will open Saturday.

In fact, everybody will be open this weekend but Big Air Winter Park.

“If we can’t open by Feb. 15, it won’t be worth it for us to open at all this year because of the enormous start-up costs,” Wilson said, searching for a silver lining. “But we’re hoping this new storm [expected Sunday] will give us what we need.”

COOL CUSTOMER

Craig Calcott, 20, is the first snowboarder this season in California (and he won’t be the last) to have found himself out of bounds, lost, and the object of a search-and-rescue effort.

The South Lake Tahoe resident last week became separated from friends after lunch in blizzard conditions at Sierra-at-Tahoe. He wasn’t reported missing, however, until about 6:30 p.m., long after the resort had closed because of dangerous conditions.

Calcott wasn’t found until early the next morning in a steep gully called “the Washbowl,” which is near an off-limits cliff known for avalanches.

Remarkably, he was alive and in pretty good shape, although “he was covered with ice” and battling the onset of hypothermia, said Sgt. Randy Peshon of the El Dorado Sheriff’s Dept. “He was neck-deep in snow and said he couldn’t climb out,” Peshon added.

The storm had dumped nearly eight feet of snow and temperatures dipped into the mid-20s during the night. Calcott reportedly called on survival skills he learned while trekking in his native New Zealand.

He built a snow cave shored with branches and sat on his snowboard and kept moving through the night to keep his circulation going. He told a gathering of reporters that he was “stoked” that rescuers were able to find him.

He probably was just as stoked that they bought his story--because of near whiteout conditions he encountered--that he had strayed out of bounds by accident. If it was deemed that he had done so wittingly, he could have been arrested and/or charged for the rescue operation, which involved helicopters and a team of 30 volunteers.

“He said he thought he saw a track and followed that [out of bounds],” Peshon said, adding that he was impressed with how well the snowboarder handled himself after the rescue. “After he climbed out of the gully, he climbed on his board and rode down the mountain.”