2022 Washington Ski Season Bogged Down by Covid and Highway Closures

Is this ski season cursed? All signs pointed to a great comeback season – a predicted La Niña, vaccines to fight Covid and a surge in unlimited season passes. But in mid-January, every local ski resort suffers some form of misfortune.

First there was no snow in November; Crystal Mountain sped past its hoped-for mid-November opening without enough of the white stuff, and Stevens failed to make her scheduled December 3 debut. But snowflakes eventually fell, and the Washington Cascades are currently made up of almost 100 percent of normal snow cover.

But Stevens Pass had 99 problems, and the late snowfall was just one. The ski resort and its parent company, Vail Resorts, have garnered most of the attention this rocky year; Only a handful of the mountain’s 10 chairlifts initially opened, rendering vast swaths of the terrain inaccessible. “Omicron/Covid has had a particularly severe impact, particularly at Stevens Pass, and staffing challenges have hit the resort harder than any other due to some of its unique attributes,” said Tom Dukeson, communications manager for Pacific Northwest. Although Vail Resorts reported a 76 percent increase in the number of Epic Passes sold internationally, there was little actual skiing in Washington. (Frequent closures of Highway 2, where the Washington Department of Transportation does plowing and avalanche control, didn’t help.)

Seattle filmmaker Jeremy Hunter Rubingh started a Change.org petition in late December, complaining, “We are disgusted by the mismanagement of the ski resort,” which Vail Resorts acquired in 2018 for $64 million; signers grew into the tens of thousands and helped inspire media coverage of Vail’s crowded and partially open ski mountains across the country. “People are fed up with corporate exploitation,” Rubingh says of why his petition went viral. “Companies that don’t value employees and don’t pay them a decent wage – and then complain about a talent shortage.”

In mid-January, Stevens Pass general manager Tom Pettigrew resigned and an interim big boss, Tom Fortune, stepped in; Fortune previously worked at Stevens Pass before managing the Vail properties near Lake Tahoe. In its first week, Fortune promised to address the issues and has already commissioned an additional chairlift at Stevens; Dukeson notes that they hope to open more sites soon.

Crystal Mountain, owned by Alterra Mountain Company and under their unlimited Ikon Pass, stands as the southern rival of Stevens Pass. In late December, after traffic backed up toward the resort in the Mount Rainier area and parking lots were full, Crystal announced a plan to require skier reservations; A few days later, they switched to weekend parking reservations and expanded Enumclaw’s shuttle service. The rush to use the unlimited Ikon Pass went from a physical backup at 7am on a weekend to a panicked online grab for reservations when they are released on Tuesdays; the offer of weekend places is sold out in a matter of minutes. Complaints piled up on social media.

Though Summit at Snoqualmie, Seattle’s closest run, isn’t covered under either national mega-pass (its owners, Boyne Resorts, own only a handful of others), it has seen mogul-sized moguls in its season. Despite record snowfalls on slopes that often suffer from rain, power problems have led to several closures. Marketing director Karter Riach says it’s much more than normal – there have been more than half a dozen major outages since Christmas, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s weekend. Backup generators can keep some lifts running when power isn’t available , but Summit had to issue a refund to both ticket buyers and tubing customers.

Rubingh, who makes films about climate change and public land use, admits he wishes these causes could get as much attention as a bad ski season. He cites Mount Baker Ski Resort, which is privately owned but nearly three hours from Seattle, as the rare ski area with affordable access. Still, he’s cautiously optimistic about the movement at Stevens Pass after January’s avalanche of negative press — even though the clock is ticking in a season that only lasts until spring. “I think time will tell if that means real change,” he says. “And they honestly don’t have much time.”