Not too long ago, Ron Fournier walked out onto North Pond, drilled holes for a day of ice fishing and returned to find three of the tourists in his ice shack wearing life jackets. A fourth had one cradled on his lap.

The ice was 32 inches thick, but, just in case.

“They’d never been on a frozen body of water,” said Fournier, 42, the owner of Orion Outfitters and Guide Service in Mason Township.

It was one of three groups he took out on the ice that week.

During the cold season, people hire him to help them fish, collect moose antlers on snowshoe treks and lead trips in the woods.

Business was better than average this winter, up about 30 percent over the worse-than-average past winter.

“It means you can keep some gas in the truck, upgrade your equipment, maybe,” Fournier said.

At Sudbury Inn in Bethel, sales were also up, with more stays at the inn and more meals at its pub, bistro and dining room.

“I think the fact that we’ve had so much snow is a real, real bonus,” said co-owner Ali Smith. “We are eying some capital things we’re going to do. We’re going to actually do some room renovations this year, starting off in the spring. We’re hoping to do a little bit of work in our dining room as well. It’s good to have the additional revenue so you can actually spend some money on the infrastructure.”

It’s a bit early yet for a full winter-in-review — in many parts of Maine, it’s only spring according to the calendar — but businesses are so far reporting a healthy season.

Lodging stays were up in January over last year, according to the latest figures from the state.

Officials expect skier and snowmobile visits to be above average when those seasons end.

Eventually.

“You have a year like this one, particularly with the residents, anything you can screw a spark plug into is registered and out on the trails,” said Bob Meyers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association. “We’ve seen an awful lot of older sleds out there and ones that clearly hadn’t been out for a couple of years. That’s terrific.”

His personal record for the latest-ride-ever is April 26, which he fully expects to smash this year.

“We’re planning a ride in May just so we can have some nice pictures for our Facebook page,” Meyers said.

Early ‘gangbusters’

Winter has historically played third fiddle to summer and fall for its tourist draw: 8.7 million overnight visitors for summer compared to 4.5 million for fall and 2.5 million for winter in 2012, according to the Maine Office of Tourism.

It does, though, still pack an economic punch: $300 million from skiing and $350 million from snowmobiling during an average winter. Hit above-average numbers and you can add a few dollars to that.

“It’s really important because a lot of that activity, too, takes place in rural areas that may not have a whole lot to offer in the wintertime,” Meyers said.

Preliminary numbers through March show snowmobile registrations running about 3 percent ahead of the same time last year, according to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Meyers expects a full month longer than average for riding — four months versus the usual three — and a strong end to the season, north of 80,000 registrations.

Greg Sweetser, executive director of the Ski Maine Association, sent his annual ridership survey out to members this week.

“Anecdotally, my feeling is that we’re going to have above-average attendance this year,” he said. “We started off gangbusters. Every single ski area and every single cross-country center was open for Christmas; that’s a little bit unusual. January, total opposite — it was a weather nightmare.”

Temperatures swung from minus 14 degrees to 51 degrees in January, according to the National Weather Service.

By February, business, and weather, were back to normal.

An average winter in Maine will see 1.3 million skier visits, Sweetser said. “My predication is we’ll be above 1.3 million. The final stats will be out in another month.”

Sunday River spokeswoman Darcy Morse said that resort is on pace to end “near where we did last year, and last year was a record year for us.” Sunday River debuted both a new terrain park and a new restaurant, Camp, this winter.

“It’s been an insane year for us,” Morse said. “Leading into major weekends or major vacation weeks we always had a storm, so that goes a long way for the folks who are kind of eyeballing our website or watching the news and paying attention to what it’s doing up in the mountains.”

At Sugarloaf Mountain ski resort, spokesman Ethan Austin said the season started slow in January with a lack of natural snow and a little more reliance on snow guns, but it came around.

“We had our challenges with electricity costs due to the extreme cold weather; that will bite into the financials a little bit,” he said. “But overall, visitation was very good, especially at those peak times.”

Ticket and lodging sales for its big Reggae Fest next weekend are pacing ahead of last year, Austin said.

In the next few weeks, both resorts will announce the official end to the regular season. At Mt. Abram, the end came Saturday, a week later than average.

“All in all, our skier visits were up just a little bit over last year,” said General Manager Dave Scanlan.

Other measures that suggest a strong economic winter: Monthly turnpike traffic was up in December, January and February over last year, according to the Maine Turnpike Authority.

And lodging sales were up by $1.6 million, to $17.4 million in January 2014, compared to January 2013, according to the Maine Office of Policy and Management’s latest taxable sales figures.

Restaurant sales were nearly flat, down $429,000 or 0.3 percent; $133.5 million compared to $133.9 million in January 2013.

Numbers for February aren’t due out for another week.

Carolann Ouellette, head of the Maine Office of Tourism, said the early optimism tracks with what she’s hearing as well in the snowmobile, skiing and lodging industries.

“The snow conditions have really been in many senses ideal,” she said. “The benefits of a season like this is it gets people excited for the next season because they’ve had such a great experience. We also hope it helps raise the awareness of how wonderful Maine is.”

Having fun from away

Ray Bergeron at Northeast Snowmobile and ATV Rentals said all three of that company’s locations — Bethel, Gorham, N.H., and Fryeburg (“world headquarters”) — saw growth this winter.

“Bethel has definitely been a hopping and booming location,” Bergeron said. “We’ll take anybody. By the time we’re done with the psychiatric evaluation — which is really a safety orientation — we take good care of them.”

About 75 percent of its client base is tourists, he said, mostly from Europe and greater New England.

At Orion Outfitters and Guide Service, two-thirds of Fournier’s clients have been from out of state and Canada, with some international tourist groups thrown in.

One trend he spotted this winter: More requests from people who want to keep and eat what they catch. He and his wife cleaned and filleted the fish and sent them along.

“My family is raised on bear, deer and moose,” Fournier said. “A lot of (clients) were intrigued.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Early indicators

Signs Maine might be coming off a healthy winter tourism season:

$17.45 million: Lodging sales, January 2014

$15.83 million: Lodging sales, January 2013

That’s up 11percent.

4.33 million and 3.99 million: Monthly turnpike traffic for January and February, 2014

4.31 million and 3.77 million: Monthly turnpike traffic totals for January and February, 2013

That’s up 3 percent

73,904: Snowmobile registrations through March 2014 (56,965 residents, 16,939 nonresidents)

71,474: Snowmobile registrations through March 2013 (55,068 residents, 16,406 nonresidents)

That’s up 3 percent

Sources: Maine Office of Policy and Management, Maine Turnpike Authority, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife

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