Mount Bachelor Community Inc. thinks a ‘values-based’ organization can successfully operate the popular Central Oregon ski resort. But the task is daunting.
When news broke in August that the corporation that owns Mount Bachelor Resort was looking to sell, Chris Porter texted a friend, “I got $20 on it.”
It was a joke. But over the coming days and weeks, that joke morphed into a serious grassroots effort, one that could, if it’s successful, significantly reshape outdoor recreation in Central Oregon.
Porter, a La Pine high school teacher with a business background, is now helping spearhead a growing community movement to take over the state’s busiest ski area from Utah-based Powdr Corp. and run it as a nonprofit.
“We have folks from every walk of life in this community,” Porter tells Oregon Business. “It’s the Oregon way of doing business. This community has come together to have a say in our public lands. A lot of the time, it’s a large corporation that’s only concerned with their bottom line.”
With his friend Dan Cochrane, a Bend real estate appraiser, the two formed Mount Bachelor Community Inc. as an outgrowth of the community-sourced website Mount Bachelor Community Conditions, which follows local ski conditions.
Today, the group MBCI has a website, a catchy slogan — “Powder to the People” — and earlier this month, it held its first public meeting, a well-attended gathering at Drake Park in central Bend. In attendance were a number of local leaders including Bend’s mayor.
The group hopes a “values-based” organization can operate the ski resort more equitably in terms of environmental stewardship and economic inclusion. In its first week, MBCI quickly reached its fundraising goal and with $40,000 in total raised on GoFundMe, is halfway to first goal to fund administrative costs.
“We’d like to transition and keep operations running as seamlessly as possible,” Porter says. “We think (Powdr) was doing a better job in the past couple years after they got through the challenges of the pandemic … But we need to do a better job of providing the experience that people travel here to partake in.”
This summer, Powdr announced it would sell its stake in Mount Bachelor, which it has operated since 2001, as well as two other ski industry holdings, Eldora ski resort in Colorado and SilverStar in British Columbia.
At the time, a spokesperson told OB the resort is not performing poorly and that the planned sale is intended to help Powdr balance its remaining holdings with other businesses.
Powrdr is using JP Morgan Chase to list the ski resort. Powdr spokesperson Stacey Hutchinson says the company has received several proposals and expects to balance its ski holdings with new ventures in the national parks sector. The company is retaining ownership in major U.S. resorts Copper Mountain in Colorado and Snowbird in Utah.
At the time of listing, a sale was expected to take around six months. The process is not expected to affect resort employees or the upcoming ski season, Hutchinson says.
Located a half-hour drive from Bend, Mount Bachelor is one of the nation’s top 10 busiest ski resorts. It regularly receives more than 400 inches of snow per year and features 4,3000 acres of lift-accessible terrain.
There’s precedent for this kind of arrangement. Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico is run by a nonprofit B Corp. In Oregon, Mt. Ashland has been operated as a nonprofit since the early 1990s. Other mountains with recreation options are held in a public trust.
For now, MBCI knows it has a long checklist ahead. Bachelor faces deferred maintenance and numerous operational hurdles. Lifts that regularly don’t operate for days need repair and the lodge could use a serious facelift, Porter says. Capital projects aside, the mountain has annual operating costs north of $100 million. And with an average of one fatality per year at the mountain for the past decade, insurance is expected to be costly.
Mount Bachelor is scheduled to open for the season Nov. 29. Mountain observers are optimistic the weather will cooperate this year after several shaky seasons. The mountain received 2 inches overnight Wednesday, its first snowfall of the year.
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