Ski Resorts. Where's the loyalty?

Probably one of the most frustrating things in the world for an avid skier is to look out the window at a snow storm - and the local ski area is closed. Sure I could hike the back country, but you know what they say about avalanche experts...there are no old ones. I don't even claim to know much more about snow stability other than to say that unpacked snow base forms layers. It's a whole lot more fun to ski the local resort in late season. But we live in different times for ski resorts. In "the old days" about 20 years ago, it was common for ski resorts to stay open at least on weekends if late season brought good snow conditions. The seasonal staff was ecstatic to ski without the worry of the time clock. The full time management staff wanted to just plain ski because most of them had hardly been on snow all season. It's not that way any more. Nowadays its all about the bottom line. Giving the faithful few skiers their final snow fix of the season is not part of the program. Turning a profit and selling real estate have become much more important. They don't seem connected to the die hard skier. The destination skier is long gone- probably playing golf some place where it's 70 degrees in April. But the die hard ski local is looking wistfully up at the mountain and 12" of fresh, heavy weight cream and dreaming- just dreaming. They used to get the president, marketing VIP's and all the other salaried staff to trade off liftie jobs every couple of hours on Satudays and Sundays. If they weren't tucking butts, they were skiing. It was great! You could meet all the higher management resort staff and ski some great snow - usually the deepest snow base of the year. The upper management staff got the chance to meet the REAL skiers. The ones that would smack people with the business end of a ski pole if they said something bad about THEIR mountain. Sometimes the die hards could even sit down at lunch and talk to the VP of Operations about ideas for the upcoming season. But it's different now and maybe it's the nature of the beast, I guess. I hope your local ski resort is willing to buck the trend. Or maybe you can get a day off from work so you can hike or ski the back country. Whatever you do, ski fast and have a blast! Cheers. Parker