Gunstock pleased with MLK Weekend numbers

GILFORD — Tom Day, general manager of Gunstock Mountain Resort, has been in the ski business for 43 years. He said he’s come to expect rain at either the beginning of Christmas vacation or the end, sometimes in the middle. But this year was the first winter that he’s seen it rainy all week for the end of December.

That’s significant, because while Gunstock will usually open by the first week of December, the Christmas break is really when the season begins, as it’s when skiers will start to come in peak-season numbers.

That didn’t happen this year, thanks to the weather, which, Day reported, resulted in a 50% drop in skiers, and a 40% decline in revenue, over the previous season.

“We had a tough Christmas week,” Day said, which is why the recent cold, and the more recent snow, was so welcome, arriving just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend — the next most important date on the ski manager’s calendar.

Last Saturday was still a bit slow, as the weather remained unsettled, but, “We had killer days Sunday and Monday,” Day said.

The crowds over the weekend showed Day there’s plenty of enthusiasm for skiing at Gunstock — that they’ll come as long as they know that there’s snow — but there’s still more ground to cover, literally.

“We are certainly down for the season” compared to last year, Day said, but Gunstock isn’t out of the game yet. Day said the ski season is about 13 weeks long, and the path to victory runs through the end of February, when New Hampshire and Massachusetts schools take a week off, and many children will spend their break on the slopes.

“We’re hoping we can do a lot of catch up over February vacation,” Day said.

While the winter weather has become less reliable, Day said two pieces of technology have helped keep ski areas in business. First is snowmaking, and Gunstock has 150 snow guns they can use to keep trails skiable even before the storms hit. Thanks to a combination of man-made snow and the natural stuff, Day said nearly all of the mountain’s trails will be open by this coming weekend.

The second piece of technology is social media, which ski areas can use to show their fans that even though it might be green in areas to the south, there is still good skiing to be had. Day said this means of communication has allowed the industry to finally throw away a truism he called “backyard syndrome,” in which people in Massachusetts won’t drive to a NH ski area unless they can see snow out their own window.

Melody Nester, assistant director for Ski NH, an industry association, said Gunstock is largely in line with the rest of the state’s ski areas in terms of sales for this season.

“We were ahead of the previous year as of Christmas Eve, we were down during Christmas vacation,” Nester said. But the Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend conditions offered many ski areas the chance to make up for lost sales — and many Nordic areas were finally able to open for the first time all season.

Nester said it isn’t just important that snow falls, it also matters when it falls.

“The three vacations that make the difference are Christmas, Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend and the February vacations,” Nester said, noting it is rare to have good conditions on all three. “If you can get two out of the three, that’s a good thing.”

Last year was a strong one for the industry, Nester said, so it’s an indication of strength that this season even has a chance to catch up. She noted some ski areas received more than two feet of snow within the past week, and the forecast shows conditions suitable for snowmaking.

“We are really looking forward to having strong February vacations, with the snow that we’ve got,” Nester said.