Lack of snow leaves Anchorage ski areas with challenging season

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Anchorage ski areas are in their final weeks of the season, while others have closed their lifts for the year following a season with limited snow.

In South Anchorage, Hilltop Ski Area closed a week earlier than normal as the ski area wrapped up its season during the last weekend in March.

“It’s been a challenging season for us this year,” Robert Deberry, a spokesperson for Hilltop, said. “Anytime we have low snow, we will definitely see less clients come through.”

Hilltop said it saw between 10% to 15% fewer people visit its ski area this year compared to the last two years. That drop in visitors, it said, was enough to feel a financial impact.

“Being a nonprofit is hard, and everything we make goes back into the hill. We take no municipal money,” Deberry said. “Everything we make comes from a ticket.”

Meanwhile, Alyeska Ski Resort said it only saw a slight downturn in visitors this year, which was a record-breaking season.

This year, the resort said, it saw its second-highest amount of in-state visitors. In addition, the resort said, it saw almost 14,000 more out-of-state visitors this year.

“Since we have launched and become part of the Icon Pass initiative we have increased visitors this year over last year coming from the lower 48,” Duane Stutzman, Alyeska’s mountain general manager, said.,

Despite these numbers, the resort does note that it was a challenging season for them as well.

“We were very fortunate with our robust snow making system to be able to operate all season long from the opening day through now with with our man made conditions,” Stutzman said.

With this week’s snowfall, the resort has gained 96 inches of snow since Monday.

“We’ve surpassed our annual season average of 650 inches to just a little over 700. So it’s turning out to end on a really good positive note,” Stutzman said.

Hilltop also had to rely on making snow this year. It’s a pricey process, said Deberry, that helped them out when there was a lack of snow on the ground.

“We got new [snow] guns this year. We got about nine of them, which really helped us remake our base in January when it all melted from the rain and the warmer temps,” Deberry said. “Pretty much all our snow was gone, so we had to remake the whole base in January like we were just opening in November.”

Alyeska’s ski season will remain open through April 27th.

Arctic Valley’s ski season will continue into this weekend. The ski area hopes to open next Saturday as well.

For now, Hilltop said its attention is on getting the hill ready for summer activities to begin in June.

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