Overall visits to New Hampshire ski areas remain below pre-pandemic levels, according to data from Ski New Hampshire.

The pandemic bounce that New Hampshire ski areas saw in 2020-21 didn’t hold over this past winter, when erratic weather combined with staffing problems that limited some operations sent ticket sales tumbling almost 4 percent.

“The 2019/20 season ended a couple weeks to at least a month early for the ski areas due to the pandemic, which drove numbers down. I think that would have been an otherwise average year,” wrote Jessyca Keeler, president of Ski NH. “We saw a big uptick in 2020-21 despite Covid precautions (such as limited ticket sales, boot up at the car measures, etc.), which in part had to do with people working remotely, coming up midweek or moving to their second homes in NH, and being desperate for something fun to do during the winter months.”

And this past season “got off to a slower-than-usual start by a week or two,” due primarily to warmer temperatures that hampered snowmaking and “a lot more warm weather events.”

Both alpine and snowtubing sales fell sharply, the latter by 7 percent but crosscountry sales were up by 4 percent from the year before.

The long-term picture shows some changes in the industry. The 10-year average of alpine visits, for example, is 2.07 million, which is about 70,000 more visits than seen this season, while this season’s cross-country or Nordic visits were a full 10 percent below the decade average of 127,000. Despite this year’s dip, tubing is actually above the 10-year average of 107,000 visits, which reflects how that aspect of the business has grown. — DAVID BROOKS/CONCORD MONITOR