Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995                   TAG: 9503080033
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT MAY NOT BE ALL DOWNHILL THIS SEASON FOR SKI RESORTS

``Old Man Winter seems to have decided to return from his Bahamas vacation and blow in some real winter weather here at Snowshoe Mountain Resort,'' said Joe Stevens, the ski reporting supervisor for the West Virginia resort.

By week's end, temperatures were falling, and so was snow. Snowguns could be heard roaring among the red spruce trees that line the trails on Cheat Mountain.

Resort operators from Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina were saying, ``It's about time.''

But will it be enough to rescue a season that started late and really never got very far before hitting a bare spot that sent it sprawling?

Even if winter sits down long and hard - and that prediction isn't in the long-range forecast - there is no way this season can catch up with last.

Some comparisons:

In mid-January last year, Snowshoe-Silver Creek, had all 50 of its slopes open, a base of 50 to 85 inches and a natural snowfall of 120 inches. At the same time this year, there were 20 fewer slopes in operation, a 10- to 20-inch base and a season's total of 241/2 inches of natural snowfall.

Conditions were worse at resorts in Virginia and North Carolina. Wintergreen, The Homestead, Ski Beech and Sugar Mountain didn't operate most of last week.

The snow guns were silent, the lifts mute and motionless, the night skiing lights off, the buses in their terminal, the ski schools closed, the rental shops vacant, the cash registers quiet.

Bryce Resort and Massanutten were struggling to hang on. You could get an idea of how tough things were when you analyzed Massanutten's Friday morning ski report: ``Four slopes open, wet granular surface, 0- to 16-inch base.''

Have you ever tried to ski on a 0-inch base? Last year, when you saw a ``0'' in the ski report, it generally had a ``4'' or a ``5'' or a ``6'' in front of it.

``But we are open and we have continued to ski through this mess, and it is snowing here today and we are hoping that the rest of the winter really will be winter,'' Steve Showalter said Friday. He is the ski area manager for Massanutten.

While there can be no catching up with 1994, which was a record year for Massanutten, there's still time for a decent season, maybe even an above-average one, Showalter said.

Skiers won't give up on their sport this early, he said. A few snow showers in the valleys will get them thinking about skiing again, and, hopefully, the money they budgeted for the sport still is available.

``Most of them who bought equipment or who asked for snow clothing at Christmas are excited about going skiing,'' Showalter said.

Wintergreen was firing its snowguns again Friday morning and expects to reopen it slopes today, said Mark Glickman, the resort's public relations director.

``We are optimistic that we still can have a real good ski season and can finish real strong, but skiing has a short window of opportunity and anything you miss, you can't make it up,'' he said.

Wintergreen, like other ski operations in the Southeast, never really has opened completely this season. Snowshoe came nearest to full skiing, having 47 of its 53 runs in operation Jan.11. Two days later, Friday the 13th, Snowshoe began losing ground. Wintergreen gave up the struggle and closed Jan.15.

``There is definitely a lot of pent-up demand for skiing,'' Glickman said. ``We had so much momentum coming off of a great winter last year. I think when it is winter again that we will see things pick back up where we left off.''