As ski resorts across Oregon enjoy an abnormally high snow pack this fall, Mt. Hood Meadows is playing the waiting game, but not for lack of snow.
Winter break skiing and snowboarding on the mountain may be out of the question since a massive water and debris slide last month, over Highway 35 near Mt. Hood, severed access to the resort.
The ski resort has been forced to delay the start of its season until the road is reopened.
An on-site contractor called it the biggest local disaster since the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980.
“It’s been terrible because we had enough snow to open up on the 16th of November,” said Mt. Hood Meadows President Dave Riley.
Dave Thompson, a field operations manager with the Oregon Department of Transportation, said the road incurred damage the night of Nov. 6, and ODOT crews are currently working on repairs with the tentative goal of reopening the highway on Dec. 15. The repair work will take an incredible amount of effort to finish on time, he said.
“A massive debris flow came down the mountain and severely damaged the highway,” Thompson said. “In all, in a ten-mile stretch, about two and a half miles were either washed out or undercut.”
Thompson said ODOT strongly supports Meadows and wants to open the road as soon as possible. Many surrounding areas have also seen economic loss without the business of skiers and snowboarders traveling to the popular resort, he said.
“The sooner we can get this open, the better for all the economy for winter sports,” Thompson said. “We fully recognize the impact this has, and we want to minimize it as much as we can. But we’re doing it in the name of safety.”
Thompson said the same goes for Meadows, which is hit hardest by the closure.
“We’re all on the same side,” he said. “We all want the road open as soon as possible. This is their livelihood we’re talking about.”
Riley said road closures are nothing new to the resort.
“This has happened periodically over and over again for the past 100 years,” he said. “But I’ve never seen it happen so large and so late in the fall.”
Daniel Quesnel, events coordinator of the University’s Snowboard Club, said the club is planning to send trips to the Mt. Hood resort for the first time this year, but it was unclear how the closure would impact it.
“Usually we don’t plan trips until winter term, so we’re not sure how it’s going to affect us yet,” he said.
As a native of Tualatin, Ore., near Portland, Quesnel said he frequently traveled to Meadows in high school, and this year is planning to use Timberline, a Mt. Hood ski resort that was unaffected by the damage to Highway 35.
ODOT is currently using a larger-than-normal work effort to clean up the mess, which left approximately 2 million cubic yards of mud, debris and boulders along the road.
“That would be 20,000 normal dump truck loads,” Thompson said.
He said crews are instead using larger dump trucks with a capacity of 30 cubic yards, as opposed to the normal 10 cubic yards.
“Workers are working around the clock using equipment normally used for mining operation, now being used for rebuilding a road,” Thompson said.
In the meantime, Meadows waits with its 72-inch snow base as of Thursday afternoon. Riley said the resort is preparing like it normally would for a ski season, grooming trails and building parks on the slopes.
“We’re incurring the costs we normally would, but with nothing to offset it,” Riley said. “Essentially, we’ve lost what would have been about a month of skiing.”
Depending upon snowfall the rest of the winter, Riley said the resort would try to remain open longer in the spring to counteract some of the revenue already lost.
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