New owners, same old resorts serve influx of weekend skiers

By GORDY HOLT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Each winter, more than 400,000 visitors, mostly from the metropolitan west side, flock to the pass, and all told, 10 million vehicles cross the summit every year on Interstate 90.

But so far all this activity has produced just 460 mostly private living units that are held as vacation homes and create a general vacancy rate of about 70 percent.

If you're waiting for a four-star resort to bloom here any time soon, however, don't hold your breath, say longtime pass watchers such as Ed Harrell, executive director of the Kittitas-Yakima Resource Conservation and Economic Development District.

Harrell has seen the dreamers come, and he has seen them go.

"Remember something called Mountain Grandeur?" Harrell muses. "German money, I think . . . or was it Canadian? They had a plan for everything: golf courses, hotels, more condominiums and trails all over."

But nothing ever came of Mountain Grandeur, and other big dreams have also fizzled.

In the early 1970s, Ray Tanner was courted frequently by agents of those eying Ski Acres, but when Ski Acres was finally sold, it wasn't to foreign investors but to the late Tanner's ol' neighbor at the summit, Ski Lifts Inc.

By the 1990s, all four ski areas wound up under the flag of Ski Lifts Inc., which had been run by the Moffett family since its founder and chairman, Webb Moffett, built a couple of rope tows for a Seattle Parks Department learn-to-ski program in 1937.

The 1997 sale of the areas to California-based Booth Creek Ski Holdings Inc., appears likely to trigger another round of excitement here at the pass.

Only this time, Booth Creek appears to be a player.

On a buying binge not yet two years old, Booth Creek and its chief executive, George Gillett, have been acquiring ski resorts as if they were bowling alleys. In addition to Ski Lifts Inc., their acquisitions include Waterville Valley and Mount Cranmore in New Hampshire, Northstar-at-Tahoe and Bear Mountain in California, and Grand Targhee in Wyoming.

"Booth Creek's plan here is to invest $30 million over the next seven to 10 years," says Lou Lenihan, who has been a fixture at the summit for decades. She managed Snoqualmie Summit for the Moffetts, and continues with Booth Creek as director of marketing and sales.

Lenihan says the new owners intend to improve the place for weekend skiers. Already a fresh coat of paint has been delivered to most of the buildings, a new ski lift has been built, eight new snow-packing machines have been acquired, food service has been expanded and a new drive-by entry for the Snoqualmie Summit lodge is nearing completion.

There also have been letterhead changes.

Since the first snowflakes flew in November, the Moffetts' flagship Snoqualmie Summit has been renamed Summit West, Ski Acres is now Summit Central and Hyak is called Summit East.

Alpental remains Alpental, a jewel on the side of a glacier-carved basin within a few hours' hike of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area to the north and east.