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Utah Ski Season Takes a Hit, But It Could Have Been Worse

Ski Utah
60-year graph of annual ski days in Utah

The weak winter weather in the last half of the 2014-15 ski season hurt the number of skier days at Utah resorts.

Skier days are defined by the National Ski Areas Association as one person visiting a ski area for all or any part of a day or night to ski or snowboard. Ski Utah ranks the past season 9th poorest in 10 years, with Utah resorts seeing a 4.9 % drop in skier days compared with last year. Paul Marshall is Ski Utah’s director of communications. He says even though that decline is disappointing, it could have been much worse given the weak snowfall from January to March.

“There’s so much more that Utah has to offer off the mountain that helps boost the winter industry economy,” says Marshall.

He says the season started great with the mountains getting 100-130 % of normal snowfall. But he says it was the huge investment in snow making technology by many resorts that made the difference during the dry spell.

“And no matter what Mother Nature brings us next year, we’ll all keep our fingers crossed of course, it’s going to be another successful season,” Marshall says.

Utah resorts’ total number of skier days was 3.95 million. Nationally, the number of skier days decreased by 5% for the 2014-15 season.

Bob Nelson is a graduate of the University of Utah with a BA in mass communications. He began his radio career at KUER in 1978 when it was still in Kingsbury Hall. That’s also where he met his wife, Maria Shilaos, in 1981. Bob left KUER for commercial radio where he worked for 25 years, and he is thrilled to be back at KUER. Bob and his family are part of an explorer group, fondly known as The Hordes and Masses, which has been seeking out ghost towns and little-known places in Utah for more than twenty years.
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