Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302220270
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
WINTERPLACE BECOMING THE PLACE
Curt Hanlen, in the ski business for more than 20 years, recently changed his address from Angle Fire, N.M., to Winterplace, W.Va. Wow! Is this guy skiing out of control, or what?Most Southeastern skiers see life's dream swooshing in the other direction. So what is Hanlen, a Westerner by birth, doing toting his skis eastward to a mountain with the less-than-romantic name of Flat Top?
As the new president of Winterplace, Hanlen hears that question often. The answer can come in the form of a whirlwind tour of this 9-year-old ski resort, located just a few snowball tosses off Interestate 77 near Beckley, W.Va.
Hanlen starts in the cafeteria, where the institutionalized food has been tossed out and there are real cooks who make fresh salads and chunky chili so spicy that a partaker may undo the work of a snow gun every time he breathes.
"This is no big deal, but look in here," Hanlen says, poking his head into the men's room where paper-towel dispensers have been installed to supplement those laboriously slow hand blowers. You no longer have to wipe your hands on your Polarguard pants.
Next, Hanlen dashes across a snowy lane to the new "Skiwees" building, designed to segregate youngsters according age.
"Studies have shown that if you have the room to separate the 4- to 7-year-old kids from the older children they will be less intimidated and interact more with their instructor and peer group," said Hanlen. "Besides, a 10-year-old doesn't want to sit down and have lunch with a 4-year-old."
Hanlen's conversation is salted with words like "new" and "improved," and he hasn't even left the base of the mountain at this point. He sums up what's happening at Winterplace in two words: "User friendly." That's why he is here.
Winterplace is West Virginia's southernmost ski resort. It lacks the mile-high terrain of Snowshoe-Silver Creek and the winter wonderland look of Canaan Valley. But the one thing it has that the others can't touch is accessibility.
"What Winterplace is, and what it always will be, I think, is the most accessible ski area in the Southeast - pure and simple." said Hanlen.
Make that interstate access. A skier in Charlotte, N.C., can ride I-77 all the way to the gate. From the Roanoke Valley, you hop onto I-81. The college crowd in the New River Valley is just 1 1/2 hours away over four-lane.
But skiing is more than a car trip, so handy access wasn't enough to spare Winterplace from financial woes.
Last year, West Virginia millionaire Bill Bright rescued the resort from bankruptcy - some say he got it for a song - and began a search for a person to run it. The carrot was this: That person would be called the president, would be considered a co-owner along with Bright (never mind that it would be minuscule amount of ownership), and would take charge of a major revamping of facilities and philosophy.
Hanlen said he was one of about 100 who applied.
"Frankly, I have to tell you I wasn't even aware that there was that much skiing in West Virginia. I had been at Angle Fire in northern New Mexico for nine years. I was director of operations. I wasn't actually looking to move. I was fairly happy."
But Hanlen couldn't resist the challenge of applying to a struggling Eastern ski area some of the things he'd learned during 20 years of working in the West. No small manner was the fact that Bright, who has skied places like Aspen and Vail, shared Hanlen's user-friendly philosophy.
"It is dog-eat-dog in the Rocky Mountains," said Hanlen. "There are more than 30 ski resorts in Colorado alone. For them, customer service has become a middle name."
When Hanlen arrived at Winterplace in June, the dirt began to fly.
Skiing terrain was expanded by 20 percent. More than a half-million yards of earth was moved to provid wider and smoother runs. This project also linked slopes and lifts to give skiers longer and more diversified routes. Included was a NASTAR race trail called Reckless Abandon.
A new triple chair lift increased uphill capacity by more than 50 percent, to 7,600 skiers per hour.
Fifteen snow guns were mounted on 40-foot towers and supplemented with high-volume Silent Storm guns. These high-tech additions are capable of blowing out blizzards of more than 700 tons of snow per hour. That's a 75 percent increase in snow making.
"Based on resort size, this is the most significant ski area improvement program I've witnessed in my 20-year career," said Hanlen.
By Friday, more skiers had come through the gates than in any other season during the last three years, said Hanlen. And the resort eased into the black ink for the very first time.
There's more. Next season's anniversary celebration calls for significantly expanded teaching terrain. The Moguls restaurant, reopened on weekends this season, will offer daily meals. A couple more expert trails will be cut into the face of the mountain.
"But we aren't going to over-invest," said Hanlen. "It is important that we know who we are and where we are. Overdevelopment is a sure-fire method of having Mother Nature rise up and get you one day."
In reality, Mother Nature hasn't been all that cooperative this season, a fact that brought a quick test for the new snow-making gear. On opening weekend in early December, 10 inches of snow fell. Then early January turned to June.
"We closed down on Jan. 9," said Hanlen. "It was disheartening, because we'd done all that talking about a `new' Winterplace and a `new' season."
More favorable weather arrived on the 12th, and by 8 p.m. the new snow guns were roaring. At 9 a.m., Jan. 14, the resort was reopened. "And by the 15th we had half the mountain open. Without the new guns, it would have taken us 10 days. Even now, there probably would be a lot of brown around here."
For the past two weeks, Winterplace has been 100 percent open. Last week, several inches of natural snow fell, followed by frigid temperatures that kept the snow guns roaring round-the-clock. Some runs were touting 3 feet of snow, and Hanlen was talking about a season that could run through March 21.
Now comes the question: Will the skiers run out before the snow does? Hanlen wonders aloud if the sport is about to price itself out of the market.
"We have to direct more entry-level skiers into the marketplace," he said.
Winterplace has been attempting to do that a couple of ways, through special deals for college students in the New River Valley and through "Learn to Ski 1993."
The latter idea was born during a Christmas Eve phone call between Hanlen and Bright.
"It means for $19.93 you get a beginner's lift ticket, a full day of rentals and an hour-and-half lesson. In that program alone, we have taught more than 4,000 people how to ski."
\ EVERYTHING IS OPEN: Snowshoe-Silver Creek has opened its 50th - and final - slope of the season, thanks to 2 feet of natural snow the past week. Cubb Run, a beginner slope without snow making, now is covered, along with all other runs.
"Our slopes are in super condition right now, as our discount season approaches, we should have excellent skiing into April," said Danny Seme, the resort's president.
\ BEECH SAYS `SI': The demand for bilingual ski school instructors is being met at Beech Mountain in Banner Elk, N.C., with lessons taught in Spanish. Many of the resort's customers are coming from the deep South.
\ SILVER QUEEN LUNCHED: Lift lines should be shorter at Timberline Four Season Resorts in Canaan Valley, W.Va., with the recent opening of the double chair lift called Silver Queen. The resort's capacity jumped from 2,800 to 4,000 skiers per hour.
\ WINTER SPORTS FESTIVAL: More than 500 skiers are scheduled to compete March 5-7 at Wintergreen during the first Mid-Atlantic Winter Sports Festival, part of the Virginia Amateur Sports Inc., sponsor of the Commonwealth Games of Virginia.