Sky Tavern Awarded $1,000,000 Grant For Snowmaking

The E.L. Wiegand Foundation has awarded Sky Tavern a $1,000,000 challenge grant for snowmaking. Now it is up to the community to match it to make this happen for kids!

Sky Tavern is a nonprofit regional center providing exceptional summer and winter outdoor sports training, recreation, competitions and events, accessible to all.

Donations installed two new carpet lifts for last winter, which was a part of being selected as the ski area doing the most to grow the sport nationwide. Now Sky Tavern is pleased to announce the E.L. Wiegand Foundation has awarded Sky Tavern a $1 million challange grant. Sky Tavern's task is to raise the remaining $1.4 million to install snowmaking. 

“We are thrilled and so grateful to the E.L. Wiegand Foundation for their faith in Sky Tavern,” Yale Spina, chairman of the Sky Tavern Board of Directors, said in a statement. “While this is a conditional grant, it encourages others in our community who believe in the great work that we have been doing for the last 73 years. Now more than ever, the affordable programs we provide are teaching kids valuable life skills, like courage and confidence.”

“Snowmaking will enable Sky Tavern to operate more consistently and sustainably, and it is the key to the future for Sky Tavern,” Skip Avansino, chairman of the E. L. Wiegand Foundation, said in a statement. “We are pleased to make this grant that will serve to help expose more and more of our area’s youth to the wonderful opportunities associated with outdoor winter activities.”

Cancelling days, and starting the programs as late as March 1st have happen more frequently. Snowmaking is a tool that can give a reliable opening and coverage. Now that the independent nonprofit has a 50-year lease and 100% responsibility for the area, it is time to move forward. As a 501c3 nonprofit Sky Tavern receives no funds from any public entity including the City of Reno. Kids need your help. 

The engineers are working on a final design but HKD Snowmakers published findings that say the process will work. Snowmaking will change skiing and riding at Sky Tavern for the better.

For its devotion to teaching local youth the sport of skiing & riding, and resort mission to support those who would like to experience snowsports, this volunteer-run nonprofit ski hill was selected as the deserving winner of the 2020/21 NSAA Conversion Cup.

Sky Tavern's on-going Junior Ski Program was first established in 1948 when local skier and schoolteacher, Marce Herz, approached the original owners Keston and Carlisle Ramsey with the idea of reducing lift prices for schoolchildren and teaching them how to ski.

Herz, who went on to win the Nevada state ski championship in combined slalom and downhill in 1950, fervently believed that sports were good for everyone, but especially for children. Herz wanted to offer school kids the thrill and excitement of sliding down a mountain. Starting with six students, the innovative ski program Herz initiated has taught tens of thousands of children.

Over time newer, larger, and more modern ski resorts opened around Lake Tahoe, places like Squaw Valley in 1949 and Heavenly Valley in 1955. Only a mile up the road, but with much steeper and challenging terrain, the Reno Ski Bowl began running chairs in 1953 at the Slide Mountain, site of today's Mount Rose Ski Area.

They all siphoned off Sky Tavern's elite clientele, as well as their bread-and-butter local adult skiers. In 1959 the Ramseys sold the resort and eventually the City of Reno purchased the 143-acre property in 1968 for the exclusive use of teaching school children how to ski, and now snowboard too.

In 1991 the City of Reno decided that it could no longer run the Sky Tavern Ski Program. A group of dedicated parents came together and formed the current non-profit orginazation that not only manages the program but maintains the Sky Tavern Area all year round.

Sky Tavern boasts a rich and colorful history, one that includes appearances by many Hollywood movie stars, prominent sports celebrities, and some of the most noted contributors to U.S. ski history. In the years after World War II and during the early 1950s, Sky Tavern basked in the spotlight as a chic, intimate resort patronized by some of the most famous personalities of the day. Contemporary celebrities like Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, and actors Rita Hayworth, Ingrid Bergman, Robert Stack, Gary Cooper, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and others all found the Tavern experience exhilarating.