Columnist Bob Shemeligian: Ski ‘resort’ a little rough around edges

Bob Shemeligian

Tuesday, March 4, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

"BOB ON SKIS? This I gotta see."

That was the consensus among my friends and co-workers before a recent trip to Lee Canyon.

Oh, excuse me.

The name of the Mount Charleston resort has been changed to Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort, "to get Las Vegas in the name," says General Manager Jack Bean.

The name also reflects the growing popularity of snowboarding. Bean estimates that nearly half of those who hit the mountain do so on snowboards.

And not all of them are happy snowboarders.

Consider 23-year-old Ruben McAllister, a convention worker whom I tried to help calm down as we impatiently waited to rent gear Saturday afternoon.

"I love snowboarding, but I've never seen a hassle like this," said McAllister, who waited in a long line for rentals and then experienced problems with his equipment.

"It was awful. It ruined my whole day," said McAllister, who explained that nearly an hour of the half-day he had paid for had elapsed by the time he rode the lift for the first time.

He has a point. At the resort, the half-day is 1-4 p.m., so he spent a third of his skiing time not on skies.

My skiing partner, Adrian, also was upset. Adrian has skiis but no boots -- having lost them on a ill-fated romantic ski getaway with the wrong woman -- and he was a little peeved that he had to pay the full rental-package price for just the boots.

Other skiiers complained that night skiing has been discontinued.

Bean's heard the complaints.

About nightskiing, he said: "They say they want it, but they don't show up. There simply isn't enough business to pay the bills."

About the rental charges: "We're not allowed to rent boots without skiis because of insurance regulations."

But some changes are planned.

"We're putting $300,000 into the rental end this summer, and we should have a complete new system next year," Bean said. "It will cut the waiting way down."

Ski resort officials hope the new system will lure enough skiiers to make night skiing profitable again.

In the meantime, Bean suggests: arrive early.

Yeah, right. I have enough problems arriving early to the newspaper office, which is five minutes from my house.

I don't think I'll be arriving early to Mount Charleston after a hard night of pounding beers and unfortunate poker dealers who dare to deal me big hands and crack them over and over.

No, 1 p.m. is fine for me.

And, oh yes, I'm not half bad on skiis, thanks to growing up in New England and taking all my spills during my youth on mountains with scary names such as Killington and Wildcat.

But I've never quite learned how to get on chair lifts -- a fact that can be attested to by Adrian, whom I spilled from the chair not once but twice Saturday while trying to cross over to his lane just before the chair arrived.

These two incidents will help answer a previous inquiry by Allister as to why "the chair lift broke down so many times Saturday."