Powdr Corp. lists popular ski area for sale.
The operator of Mount Bachelor Resort is looking to sell it and two other leisure industry holdings.
In the next few weeks, Utah-based Powdr Corporation will use JP Morgan Chase to list Mount Bachelor as well as Eldora ski resort in Colorado and SilverStar in British Columbia, according to a company press release last week.
With 4,300 acres of lift-accessible terrain, Bachelor is one of the top 10 busiest ski resorts in the U.S. With light, dry snow and a long season, it regularly receives more than 400 inches of snow each year.
A sale could take six months or longer, a spokeswoman told The Bulletin of Bend, adding that Mt. Bachelor employees and the upcoming ski season will not be affected.
Situated 26 miles from Bend, the formerly named Bachelor Butte is a dormant stratovolcano at the eastern edge of the Cascade Range. Originally named for its proximity to the nearby Three Sisters peaks, Mount Bachelor has featured a ski area since 1958, when it had only a rope tow. Growth of the ski area exploded in the mid-to late 1970s, to around a half-million annual visitors.
Powdr merged with Mount Bachelor ski area in 2001. In 2016, the company purchased Bend-based Sun Country Tours and expanded to provide summer activities.
Powdr recently sold two Vermont ski resorts, Killington and Pico Mountain. It is retaining ownership in Copper Mountain in Colorado and Snowbird in Utah. Powdr’s Woodward brand includes camps and ski centers and concession contracts with two national parks. The company intends to balance its ski business with new ventures in the national parks sector, according to spokeswoman Stacey Hutchinson.
Hutchinson told Oregon Business the sale isn’t related to business at the mountain.
“Mount Bachelor is not performing poorly,” she wrote. “And the sale had nothing to do with any lawsuits.”
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Though the mountain saw no fatalities from 2008 to 2015, it’s averaged one per year since that point, and Powdr has faced several lawsuits as a result. A 9-year old Tacoma boy died in icy conditions in 2021 resulting in a $49 million wrongful death lawsuit. The next year, two skiers died on the same day in separate accidents.
And since 2018, five people have died in tree wells, which are hidden cavities of deep snow formed when branches prevent falling snow from compacting around tree trunks. Tree wells are common in ungroomed ski terrain. In one day in 2018, two people died in tree wells at Mount Bachelor in separate incidents. Families of both victims sued for a combined $30 million. Last summer, a jury found in Powdr’s favor in one of the cases.
The most recent fatality at Bachelor was Bend resident Douglas Harrington, 58, who suffocated in a tree well in March.
The “Powdr” name came from the license plate of a friend of company founder John Cumming. The friend, Craig Badami, died in a helicopter crash shortly before the company was founded.
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