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Park City • No, maybe the snow conditions weren't what they'd hoped upon booking their holiday week ski trips.
But a thin snowpack didn't dent the enthusiasm of the Fleischer family from Fort Worth, Texas. They hit Deer Valley's slopes once again on Sunday, as they've done most days of their two-week trip.
That's a time span in which it has become painfully clear that this start of winter will rank high in National Weather Service records for bleak snow totals, not much better than the dry winter of 1976-77.
Snowmaking is the big difference between then and now, so people like Liz Fleischer still could cruise around just fine Sunday with husband Russ and their twin 9-year-olds, Mia and Ozzie.
"It's actually been fun because we've done a lot of family skiing," said the 46-year-old mom, president of the Junior League of Fort Worth. "We didn't get to do the chutes and powder over in Empire Canyon [all closed]. My husband and the kids missed that the most. But there's been plenty of snow and places to go — and it hasn't been crowded."
The 29-inch base Deer Valley sported entering the new year did nothing to disrupt the annual holiday trip taken by Geryl Kortlander and her sons, Matt, 21, and Jon, 19. Hard-packed runs softened slightly by a thin surface layer of machine-made snow reminded Geryl too much of the Northeastern skiing she experienced while growing up in New Jersey. But, she added quickly, "we're not complaining. We're having fun."
She also noted that "our hotel is booked, so people were still coming."
That's one encouraging anecdote for ski industry-related businesses and governments that count on a lot of revenue coming in during the Christmas/New Year's week. The industry entered the holiday period with elevated expectations. Bookings for December were up 11.3 percent over the same month a year ago, said the Denver-based Mountain Travel Research Program, which tracks occupancy levels at 265 property management companies around mountain resorts in Utah, Colorado, California and Oregon.
Since Jenna Strickler has not been on skis for 10 years, limiting runs to mostly intermediate blues and beginner greens changed nothing in the vacation plans she and Joseph Rountree made back home in Dallas.
"We've heard all about [the low snow] and can understand everyone being concerned," Rountree said, "but we've had a blast. We set our expectations a little lower, and it's better than we expected."
After all, said Steve Bostick, a 58-year-old accountant out skiing with his family from Eddy, Texas, about halfway between Dallas and Austin, "I grew up on a farm. I know how the weather can be. … You just live with it."
People were doing that at resorts across Utah.
At the Canyons Resort, Talisker spokesman Steve Pastorino said the Ninety-Nine 90 lift opened Sunday for the first time this season, offering some exposure to some of that area's steeper — but still thinly covered — bowls, chutes and glades.
Despite only a 19-inch base, "the lifts were busy but without waits" at Brian Head Resort in southwestern Utah, said spokesman John Brice.
On the north end of the state at Beaver Mountain in Logan Canyon, owner Marge Seeholzer said most of her resort's runs are open but lift-ticket sales are about half of normal for this time of year.
"Pray for snow," she pleaded. "Snow has a huge impact on the whole Utah winter economy."
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