SKIING / CHRIS DUFRESNE : May Skiing No Day at the Beach

The coldest and wettest winter in years left Southland ski operators rolling in the snow and the dough, right?

Ski areas will be open through May, right?

Wrong.

Welcome to snow business.

Despite record snowfalls and great conditions, most local resorts will be closing at about the same time as last year, a season of drought.

Snow Summit in Big Bear will operate through Easter, April 11, then make a decision.

And, despite a three- to five-foot base at Mt. Baldy, the resort plans to shut down in early May, about the same time it did last season.

The reason?

“Because people start going to the beach in May,� said Gina Palmieri, a spokesperson for Mt. Baldy. “If we didn’t have to compete, just based on snow, we could probably stay open until the end of May.�

Same story at Snow Summit, where a cold spring storm dropped another eight inches of snow last weekend.

Regardless, the operation is already gearing down.

“We could have five feet of snow on May 1, and there might not be a person here that wants to ski,� said Carrie Shirreffs of Snow Summit.

Such is not the case in the Eastern Sierra at Mammoth, which plans to operate through July 4 for only the eighth time since 1969.

Of course, there are no beaches near Mammoth.

Shirreffs: “In Southern California, you can go to the beach in the morning and hit the slopes in the afternoon. We compete with the amusement parks. We have a lot of competition.�

And, despite the great winter, the numbers at Snow Summit have not been record-setting.

The resort reports it actually had more skiers in two years in the midst of a drought.

“Snow is not the answer,� Shirreffs said. “You would think it would be.�

The other factors:

--A lagging local economy kept a lot of people from plunking down $38 for a daily lift ticket.

--A warm tropical rainstorm in January, a prime-time skiing month, closed operations at several resorts for as long as two weeks.

--An early winter allowed resorts without snowmaking abilities to open early, forcing the larger resorts with snowmakers to share the profits.

“We typically open mid-November with man-made snow,� Shirreffs said. “(This year) we opened on natural snow in early November. We had to share with everybody. The skiing was unbelievable and everything was open.�

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A rebellion is brewing on the World Cup circuit as it concludes a season of controversies.

At the eye of the storm is the International Ski Federation (FIS), skiing’s governing body.

After a recent string of complaints, some of the world’s top skiers are talking about forming their own professional tour.

Their complaints deserve consideration. Skiers want more control over the decisions to hold or cancel races because of weather or course conditions, a power the FIS controls. Skiers also want more control in the design of the courses.

These complaints come in the aftermath of chaos on the World Cup tour beginning last month in Aspen, when a downhill that American AJ Kitt was leading was canceled because of a rut on the course.

The decision was made by FIS official Karl Frehsner, who has garnered little respect among the world’s top skiers.

Skiers claim the rut that forced the cancellation was caused by course designer Sepp Messner, another FIS man, after he added an extra gate on the downhill to slow the course.

Recently, in Lillehammer, Norway, 12 of the first-seeded women boycotted a training run to protest the selection of the Olympic course, which the women said was too easy.

In Sierra Nevada, Spain, a group of first-seeded men boycotted a slalom race because of disagreements about course preparations and scheduling.

Whether breaking off on a separate tour is the answer is debatable.

The more logical step is for the FIS to overhaul its system and include skiers as part of a new system.

The alternative is ominous.

“As far as the U.S. ski team is concerned, we made it clear some time ago that we’re prepared to be part of a new circuit,� Howard Peterson, the outgoing president of U.S. Skiing, recently told the Rocky Mountain News.

Skiing Notes

Not all the World Cup news was negative. Skiers had nothing but praise for the men’s downhill course that will be used for the 1994 Olympic Games at Lillehammer. The course in Kvitfjell was designed by former Swiss downhill great Bernhard Russi. . . . Tentative closing dates of Colorado ski resorts: April 11: Aspen Mountain, Steamboat Springs, Telluride, Snowmass, Crested Butte and Wolf Creek. April 18: Breckenridge and Beaver Creek, Vail and Winter Park. Late April: Copper Mountain. Early May: Loveland Ski Areas, Keystone. Late June: Arapahoe Basin.

In the final World Cup downhill standings, Tommy Moe finished ahead of AJ Kitt. Moe was 19th, Kitt 21st. No one would argue, however, that Kitt is America’s best downhiller. His finish was more a result of bad luck. Kitt was leading two downhills that were canceled, one because of poor weather at Val d’Isere, France, and one because of a rut controversy at Aspen.