Paradise Basin leads way for opening ski season

YAKIMA -- The folks who run White Pass ski area didn't need to see the final numbers to know their Paradise Basin expansion was a success. They could see it every day that the parking lots were filled ... and the slopes were not.

Almost 800 new acres of skiable terrain and 11 new trails, after all, do tend to spread out all those skiers and snowboarders.

"While the parking lot was filled on many days, it just never felt that crowded on the hill with all that new skiing area," said White Pass spokeswoman Kathleen Goyette about last winter's debut of the new Basin expansion.

"That's what we heard a lot from people, especially people who were skiing here maybe for the first time -- that you just don't find the crowds and long lift lines that you find at other areas. It really helps spread people out."

The lure of skiing the new expansion trails clearly had a big impact, bumping business up by about 25 percent from about 121,000 skier visits in 2009-10 to just more than 153,000 last winter. That's by far White Pass' biggest year, surpassing its previous 2001-02 record of 142,570.

The increase wasn't entirely due to the expansion. Part of that was the long season, with the main area opening in late November (the Paradise Basin expansion opened Dec. 4, 2010).

The vast majority of Paradise Basin's skiable terrain is made up of fairly easy slopes. Basically, if a skier can navigate the main area's beginner runs such as Near Side and Far Side without a problem, it's not that much of a step up in difficulty to head over to Paradise Basin.

Seven Washington resorts -- White Pass, the Summit at Snoqualmie, Stevens Pass, Crystal Mountain, Mission Ridge and 49 Degrees North -- as well as Mount Hood Meadows and Timberline in Oregon were all open in at least limited operation by the weekend before Thanksgiving.

That created a wave of "best start ever" optimism around the industry, something Scott Kaden of the Pacific Northwest Ski Areas Association said doesn't take into consideration how strong last year's early season was throughout the region.