Drought drags down skier visit numbers
By Jason Blevins, Denver Post
One of the worst winters ever on the West Coast dragged total visits to the nation’s ski resorts down to the third-lowest mark in a decade.
The National Ski Areas Association’s tally of U.S. skier visits for the 2013-14 season reached 56.2 million, a decline of 1.3 percent from last season and below the 10-year average of 57.3 million.
Blame it on the lingering drought in California, where visits to ski resorts dropped 27.8 percent. Visits to resorts in the Pacific Northwest, which shared the super-snowless start to the season, declined 27.5 percent. The West Coast’s dry 2013-14 season sunk resort visits to the second-lowest mark in 36 years.
