Avalanches leave ski area hurting financially

Molly Ball

Friday, Jan. 14, 2005 | 9:32 a.m.

Even if the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort reopens this season, it will be crippled by the loss of one of its three chairlifts that was wiped out by a major avalanche earlier this week, the resort's manager said on Thursday.

Lift 1 is "not going to be fixed this season," General Manager Brian Strait said. "There's a good possibility it would be a total replacement."

The chair is the only way to reach four of the small resort's 11 runs, Strait said.

The chair is not the one that was carrying a 13-year-old snowboarder when he was swept off and buried by a lethal avalanche on Sunday. But on Tuesday, two more massive avalanches swept down, and one caused extensive damage to Lift 1's upper terminus and two of its towers, the resort said.

The lift replacement is just one of the potential financial consequences for the resort, which is closed at least through the weekend.

A new chairlift, a week of lost revenue, a season of operating at less than two-thirds capacity, plus the potential for the fatal avalanche to put a damper on tourism -- the effects on the resort could be severe.

Strait said the resort has not yet calculated how much the avalanches will have cost, which depends on when the area reopens.

An investigation into what caused the fatal avalanche, the first to occur in-bounds at a ski area since 1986, is ongoing.

Even if the ski area's avalanche control measures are found to be flawed, the resort probably will not be fined -- but that doesn't mean it hasn't suffered, said Tim Short, the Forest Service district ranger for the area that includes the resort.

"I'm not aware of any monetary fines that could be assessed," Short said. "But in a sense, they're already experiencing that."

Resort officials would not disclose financial information about the ski area, which is privately owned by Utah-based Powdr Corp. Its daily capacity is 1,000 people and its season was expected to last from mid-November to Easter, according to the resort's Web site.

Strait said the damaged chairlift was a two-seater manufactured by Hall, a company that went out of business in the 1980s. He did not have further information on its specifications.

Based on the length of the runs at the area, the chair was probably about 2,500 feet long. A new one of that length would probably cost $1.25 million to $1.5 million, including installation, according to Tom Clink, North American sales manager for Leitner-Poma, a Colorado-based lift manufacturer.

"It's probably 25 or 30 years old, so it probably needed replacing in any event," Clink said.

Rebuilding the lift or buying a used one probably wouldn't be cost-effective because of the high cost of installation and reengineering. "(A reinstalled lift) would be 60 to 80 percent of the cost of a new one, and you end up with a 20-year-old lift with no warranty," he said.

The investigators hope to have a report on the fatal avalanche by early next week, Short said. The report will be made public, he said.

The review focuses on ensuring that the resort is safe to reopen and that tragedy won't strike again, he said. Its purpose is to discover the facts of what happened, not who was responsible, he said -- that would be up to the police.

"As fare as operations management, the ski area, the changes we can make -- that's the purpose of the review," Short said. "Right now there's no smoking gun" to indicate wrongdoing of any kind.

"There's nothing to indicate" that the boy's death was anything more than a "terrible tragedy," Short said. "As for the fatality itself, if there's concern with that, it's more of a law-enforcement arena."

However, Metro spokesman Sgt. Chris Jones said police are not investigating the death because no crime occurred.

Forest Service avalanche specialist Doug Abromeit said the route the avalanche followed down the mountain originated out of bounds, above the top of the lifts.

But it struck with such force that it knocked down the obstacles -- such as trees -- that would have stopped a smaller slide and hurtled down the open run under the lift carrying 13-year-old Allen Brett Hutchison.

The north mountain face where the avalanche started is normally too steep for avalanches, said Abromeit, the director of the National Avalanche Center in Idaho and leader of the current investigation team.

Because of the steepness, snow usually just sloughs off that slope. But on Sunday, the snow was falling so fast and so wet that "it just got plastered against the mountain," he said.

And then it all came down at once.