Ski area succeeds on its own terms
Marketing the biggest snow job on the planet

by Christopher Key

When your business lives or dies according to the whims of fickle Mother Nature, you either accept it philosophically or get a job in an office with no windows. The Howat family, nearly synonymous with the success of Mt. Baker Ski Area, is a philosophical bunch.

“We say there is no such thing as bad weather,” said marketing director Gwyn Howat. “You’re just wearing the wrong clothing or have the wrong attitude.”

Three years ago, they had to shut down some lifts because the world record snowfall created drifts so deep that the chairs wouldn’t clear them. This season, the slopes were bare until early December.

“We’re snow farmers,” said Gwyn. “We have to do 12 months worth of business in five months. When we lose one of those months, it’s tough. This season, we had to adjust on a daily basis, knowing that when the snow finally hit, we’d have to kick it into double overdrive.”

The eagerness of local skiers and snowboarders gets nearly uncontrollable when the white stuff arrives late.

“The week before we opened,” Gwyn said, “we were getting 6,300 calls per day on our snow lines. We got so many hits on the website, it jammed the computer that gathers statistics. The enthusiasm of the locals helps us make up for lost time.”

In spite of the unpredictable weather, Mt. Baker has set records for season ticket sales for three years running. The Snowboard Resort Guide has ranked Mt. Baker first in snow quality and second in quality of terrain out of all the resorts in North America. It’s one of those overnight success stories that took close to a century.

One of the events that helped put the mountain on the map was the first Mt. Baker Marathon Race held in 1911. Participants made their way from Bellingham to the top of Mt. Baker and back. It was a bit more challenging than the modern 26 mile run. The race helped focus attention on the need for a highway and preliminary survey work began later that year. Construction, however, didn’t begin until 1921.

In 1923, the Mount Baker Development Company anticipated completion of the highway by leasing property from the US Forest Service for a mountain resort. The highway was completed to Heather Meadows in 1926 and the Mount Baker Lodge opened in 1927. Area ski enthusiasts organized the Mt. Baker Ski Club that same year.

The good news was that Heather Meadows hosted its first ski tournament in 1930. The bad news was that the lodge burned to the ground in 1931.

One of the first events that drew national and international attention to the mountain happened in 1934 when Clark Gable and Loretta Young arrived to star in the film version of “Call of the Wild.” Photographs of Gable, Young, and other cast members on skis were widely circulated. Since skiing was apparently the wave of the future, the resort owners decided to catch it.

A primitive, sled-type lift utilizing ropes and a donkey engine was installed in 1936, but proved to be unreliable in varying snow conditions. A more successful rope tow came to Heather Meadows in 1937.

World War Two brought an abrupt halt to the fledgling ski area. Wartime shortages of gasoline caused the highway department to cut back maintenance operations, including clearing the Mt. Baker Highway. It was the final nail in the coffin of the Mount Baker Development Company, which had been struggling ever since the lodge fire.

After the war, Archibald Talbot, president of Bellingham Marine Railway and Boatbuilding Company, and some other investors formed Mount Baker National Forest Company. They repaired and renovated the remaining buildings at the site, which had deteriorated due to disuse and vandalism. The rope tow was reactivated and Talbot spent a lot of money trying to build a new lift at Austin Pass. It never worked properly and was eventually dismantled.

Back down in Bellingham, the Komo Kulshan Ski Club formed to promote skiing as a family sport. They sponsored the first Heather Cup giant slalom race in 1948. The amount of snow on the mountain that year can be judged by the fact the race was held on July 4.

Enormous amounts of snow provided a challenge for experienced skiers, but discouraged beginners and intermediates. After a big snowfall, groups of up to 200 skiers would pack some of the slopes by side-stepping all the way down.

Hampered by lack of funds during the Korean War, the highway department threatened to close Mt. Baker Highway unless enough traffic could be stimulated to justify the cost of snow removal.

Helge Johansen led a committee appointed by the chamber of commerce to try to save the ski area. He and ten others formed the Mount Baker Recreation Company in 1952. Most of the investors who bought stock in the company did so as a civic duty and never expected to see any return on their investment. The first chair lift to the Panorama Dome was completed in 1954 and wasn’t joined by a second until 1965.

Much of the success of the ski area can be attributed to the Howat family’s stewardship. It began in 1968 when 23 year old Duncan Howat was brought in to manage operations. Duncan grew up on a farm in Eastern Washington and caught an incurable case of mountain fever while skiing at White Pass. The Howats actually lived next to Olympic champion skiers Steve and Phil Mahre for a short time at White Pass. Gwyn was two years old when they came to Mt. Baker and already on skis. There were two chair lifts operating and a third under construction. Today there are eight chair lifts and two day lodges to serve skiers and snowboarders.

Duncan was instrumental in forming the philosophy that the ski area should offer a close encounter with nature rather than being a shopping mall in the mountains.

“We are bordered by a national park on one side and a wilderness area on the other,” Duncan said. “This natural state is an attraction in itself. People come here to be in the mountains. You won’t see any TVs or video games in our lodges or corporate logos plastered all over the place.”

The Howats say it’s an intentional strategy.

“People need a break from the hard sell, tech inundated everyday world,” said Gwyn. “It never ceases to amaze me that people lose touch with nature to the point of not knowing how to dress for the outdoors. Here, they can get wet and cold and have a great time doing it. Customers regularly thank us for that. We do it this way because it feels right to us. We have to trust that because we like it, others will.”

While many mid-sized ski areas have been bought out by big corporations, Mt. Baker prefers to maintain its independence and express its own personality.

“This is a more natural mountain environment rather than one that features a lot of white trails through the trees,” Gwyn said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t provide the best service possible, maintaining the chairs and grooming the runs.”

The usual abundance of white stuff means you won’t see snowmaking machines at Mt. Baker.

“If we don’t have snow, it’s usually because the temperature is too high,” Gwyn said, “which means that you can’t make artificial snow anyway.”

So successfully has the ski area blended in with the surroundings that it recently received a grade A from the environmental watchdog group Ski Area Citizens Coalition. Only six ski areas on the West Coast got the top grade. Duncan credits the board of directors for supporting his efforts.

“We have a great mix of avid skiers and hard-headed business people who help keep us on track,” Duncan said.

That board is headed by president Howard Mills, Jr., vice president Bob Diehl and treasurer Hartwell Bressler, along with Duncan Howat, Paul Hanson, Fred Haskell, Verdun Place and Ken Nuckolls.

Their task is no easy one. Originally, the ski area paid the Forest Service a fee based on gross fixed assets. That was changed not long ago to a complex formula based on a percentage of gross revenue. The formula includes break points that favor large ski areas over mid-sized ones like Mt. Baker. Their fees went up by 30 percent. Despite that and other rising costs for fuel, insurance and minimum wage, Ski Area Management Magazine rates lift tickets at Mt. Baker as the best value in the industry.

Mt. Baker’s remote location creates some other challenges. The ski area is not served by utilities and has to generate its own power. They also have to operate their own water system with all the strict regulations that entails. Lack of phone service hampers communications with an administrative facility that is 60 miles away.

“We just spent a quarter of a million dollars on a microwave communications system that will allow us to transmit voice and data,” Duncan said. “Our capital costs are huge.”

The remote location also means that employees have to be able to do almost everything. When something breaks down, they have to resolve the problem in house rather than calling in someone who may get there in a few hours or days.

“We are fortunate,” said Gwyn, “to have a very stable core staff. Area manager Dennis Espland, his assistant Boyd Starr, lift maintenance supervisor Angelo Zopolos, utilities manager Herb Long and avalanche control specialists Jon and Martha Bengen have all been with us for close to 30 years. We couldn’t do it without them.”

All of the employees have an emotional connection to the mountain that carries over into their marketing efforts. This year, they sponsored a festival of films, art and music inspired by those emotions. Much of it will be incorporated into marketing.

There aren’t many histories of snowboarding and the ones there are were written by corporate interests who rarely acknowledge the role played by Mt. Baker. The fact is that the sport started here and was popularized here.

“In 1982,” Duncan said, “a group of people from Mt. Vernon came to me and wanted to know if they could try something new here. They were mostly involved in sports like motocross and skateboarding. It was my responsibility to insure that anything going on at the mountain was safe. So I checked them out thoroughly. The equipment was primitive, but they showed me that they could do it safely, so I let them in.”

Primitive was hardly an adequate description of the early gear. Hiking boots or high-top sneakers were bound to the boards with duct tape. The silvery tape became such an icon of snowboarding that the trophies given for the Legendary Banked Slalom race were made of it. The first of those races was held in 1985 and it has become an event second in size only to the US Open. The Legendary Banked Slalom is held on Superbowl weekend, traditionally one of the worst times for ski resorts. Duncan thought the race would boost a slow period and he was right. It’s now the biggest weekend of the year at Mt. Baker. It has become as much a celebration of the sport as a race and attracts the biggest names in snowboarding

The near-mythical group called MBHC, or Mount Baker Hard Core, took the sport around the nation and the world. Gwyn’s sister Amy was a charter member of the group.

“The California people called us hard core,” Amy recalled, “because we would go out in any kind of weather. Forty degrees and raining? No problem. We were out there. The Californians thought we were nuts.”

They might have been nuts, but they were also champions.

“Our terrain produces world-class athletes,” said Gwyn. “On the international circuit, people would notice that many of the winners trained at Mt. Baker and that helped build our reputation.”

It also helped that Mt. Baker has a laid-back, non-corporate environment that appealed to snowboarders. In their culture, it’s cool to be uncool. No rider is considered to be hard core unless he or she has made a pilgrimage to the snowboarding Mecca.

Through all the success, the ski area has remained firmly grounded in the community. One of the programs they’re most proud of is the RideFree program, which brings 850 fifth graders from 16 schools in Whatcom County to the mountain. They are bussed in and receive free lift tickets for the whole season. It has been a phenomenal success.

“There are a lot of fourth graders who would have my hide if we ever cancelled it,” Gwyn said. “The first time they get here, a lot of them are scared. Some of them have never had any athletic success. In addition to learning a sport, they are exposed to nature. Eight weeks later they act like they own the mountain. Seeing that happen is hugely rewarding.”

It’s smart business, as well. Those fifth graders will always remember where they learned to ski or board and associate those positive experiences with Mt. Baker. The Howats often see people on the mountain who met their mates there. Now they’re bringing their kids. Mt. Baker regulars form a community within a community.

Statistics show that mid-sized ski areas like Mt. Baker have the highest profit margins in the industry despite considerable challenges. A survey taken about ten years ago showed that 40 percent of the winter tourist visits to Whatcom County were produced by Mt. Baker Ski Area. It could well be closer to 75 percent these days.

Canadian business has been affected far more by the unfavorable exchange rate than by border crossing difficulties caused by 9/11. There was a noticeable drop several years ago when the Canadian dollar plummeted, but business has leveled off since then. Gwyn pointed out that residents of Abbotsford can get to Mount Baker faster than residents of Bellingham. The lost Canadian business has been completely offset by increased visits from Whatcom and Skagit Counties.

Bellair Charters makes it easier for local residents to get to the mountain without driving. Every weekend and holiday, busses pick up skiers and boarders at the Cotton Tree Inn in Mount Vernon, Western Washington University, Sunset Square and the Snowwater Resort. They arrive on the mountain at 8:45 AM and depart at 3:30 PM. Reservations should be made at least 24 hours in advance.

“We feed people’s souls during the winter,” Gwyn said. “Come on up. We offer a different shade of gray.”