Mt. Bachelor is for sale.
The Bend-area resort’s parent company, Powdr Corp., announced the sale Thursday as part of a plan to break up a multinational conglomerate and offload four resorts under its control.
Bachelor was the second-largest private employer in Bend as of last year and the city’s fourth-largest employer overall. Powdr acquired the resort from its local founders in 2001.
FILE - Powdr, the company that owns and operates Mt. Bachelor ski resort, shown in this Dec. 7, 2020 file photo, plans to put the resort up for sale along with 4 other resorts it owns in North America.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
The company, which owns and operates 10 resorts in the U.S. and Canada, also intends to sell Killington and Pico ski areas in Vermont, Eldora Mountain in Colorado, and SilverStar Mountain Resort in British Columbia.
While one of those sales is already in the works, details about Mt. Bachelor’s fate were scant as of Thursday. Powdr officials declined an interview with OPB and provided written statements, saying they are dedicated to a “seamless transition,” for all four resorts.
“Over the coming weeks, we will list three of our ski resorts—Eldora, Mt. Bachelor, and SilverStar—for sale, with JP Morgan Chase managing the process,” Powdr representative Stacey Hutchinson wrote in an email.
Central Oregon visitors should expect “business as usual,” for the upcoming winter season, according to a separate press release from resort officials, who said they plan to open the slopes Nov. 29.
Powdr has said a small group of local investors will buy the Killington and Pico ski areas in Vermont.
“As a private company, we will not be sharing any financial details,” Hutchinson said of the sale.
The Vermont ski areas will reportedly remain on the Ikon Pass, a multi-resort ticket that also brings many visitors to Bachelor.
“We are excited to remain a shareholder of the mountain keeping our focus on maintaining the high standards of service and experience that our guests have come to expect,” Hutchinson said of the Vermont deal.
In Oregon, Mt. Bachelor leases 8,122 acres of public land in Deschutes National Forest from the U.S. Forest Service, with roughly half that being skiable terrain, making it the largest ski resort in the Pacific Northwest.
Currently, the early purchase price for a winter pass to Mt. Bachelor totals $1,349, or $1,978 for an all-year pass with Ikon access. The winter pass goes up to $1,449 after Sept. 25, a new high for sticker prices that have long fueled complaints about equitable access from mountaingoers.
In 2021, Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon publicly skewered the resort for “pricing out families,” after it announced it would let people who pay extra skip to the head of long lift lines.
Longtime mountaingoer and former Mt. Bachelor ski instructor Chris Porter said he wasn’t surprised to hear about Powdr’s plans to bow out.
“The private equity model incentivizes companies to get the most profit they can and leave,” Porter said. He described himself as a “recovering accountant,” and he teaches business and entrepreneurship near the resort at La Pine High School.
“I’d love to see a grassroots effort just like what happened on the East Coast, where there could be some more local ownership and local input to really keep it as part of the community. It’s a gem in our backyard,” Porter said.
Under the Forest Service’s fee structure, the more money a ski area makes, the more its operators pay in annual fees to the government. But despite that close relationship with a public agency, the financial reality behind Powdr’s plan to sell four resorts remains opaque.
Regionwide, Forest Service revenue from ski resorts in the Pacific Northwest looked rosy from 2017 through 2022, according to public records obtained by OPB last year. Those records indicate that during those years, about 20 resorts collectively were paying more than ever before back in to public coffers, an indication that revenue on the mountains was up.
When asked to review the figures, accounting expert and Portland State University Professor Emeritus Ray Johnson said inflation didn’t look like the driver. He said resort revenues were likely up because of an increased number of skiers, and higher resort prices, but without more details, he couldn’t identify a primary force.
But, those details are a secret. How much Powdr, or any other individual ski resort operator, pays to lease public land is not something the Forest Service will reveal. The agency denied public records requests by OPB last year by arguing the disclosure would reveal confidential financial information about a private company.
Powdr representatives said the company plans to hold on to Copper Mountain in Colorado and Snowbird ski resort in Utah, as well as its Woodward camps and mountain centers in Utah, and two National Parks concession contracts.