BURKE, Vt. (AP) -- Despite little snow and limited trails, school groups took to the slopes at Burke Mountain Resort on Wednesday for their first lessons of the season.

As winter arrived this week, ski areas, plagued so far by scant snow, warm spells and rain, bragged about snow accumulation, fired up snow guns at full tilt, and tried to convince skiers that they had snow.

The Vermont Ski Areas Association whisked snowballs and wedges of cheese in coolers off to meteorologists in New York and Boston before the recent warm spell and has been running television ads direct from the slopes to prove that the state's ski areas have snow.

"On top of that, we're just waiting for the weather," said Tori Ossola, the association's vice president of marketing.

With no snow in the backyards of southern New Hampshire, Boston, New York and Providence, R.I., as the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend approached, ski areas were relying on technology to get skiers and riders in the mood. They've added links to mountain Web cams and podcasts in their e-mail blasts.

Fifteen of 19 ski areas listed on the Ski New Hampshire Web site feature links to video "ski cams" and photo galleries on their Web sites. The cameras are placed strategically -- most of them prominently feature a blasting snow gun in the foreground.

"There's snowmaking going on everywhere," said Alice Pearce, a spokeswoman for Ski New Hampshire.

Crippled by a second consecutive winter with little snow, ski resorts are banking on the costly snowmaking and the hope of mid-to-late-winter cold and snow to salvage the season.

"Vermont is the original ski state. It is incredibly difficult to have the weather be so uncooperative," said Parker Riehle, president of the Vermont association.

The number of open trails at Stowe Mountain Resort dropped from 70 percent in early January to 25 percent last week following the warm snap. With snow guns blasting, Stowe expected to have 70 percent of trails covered by the holiday weekend.

As the weather shifted this week, buses unloaded school kids Wednesday at Burke as snow flurries clouded the air.

"Things they are a changing," Laurie Boswell, director of the Riverside School in Burke, said of the weather.

Although only 22 percent of the trails were open, Boswell said students were thrilled to be out on the slopes.

"The kids were really disappointed during the Christmas week. They wanted to be out skiing and riding," she said.

With just 20 to 40 percent of trails open around Vermont, some resorts have slashed ticket prices to reflect the limited terrain. A full-price ticket costs $54 at Burke.

Determining the price of a lift ticket is a daily decision for Burke this winter.

"We look outside and ask, 'What do we have, what do we think its worth,"' said David Gwatkin, Burke's director of sales and marketing, where tickets sold for $27 last week. "What we'll have to gauge this weekend, No. 1 is what's the status of our product ... also the fact that this is a key holiday weekend."

Bromley in southern Vermont, where weekend tickets normally go for $61 a day, has slashed prices by as much as half, depending on the weather.

"We take it on a weekend by weekend basis," said Michael Van Eyck, a spokesman for the resort.

With business down by as much as 40 percent at some resorts, officials worry about the broader implications of a snowless winter.

"The real big picture concern is the impact you'll see on businesses and communities around Vermont that are so reliant on the ski industry," which generates $1.5 billion a year in revenues, Riehle said.

Rain in parts of the state Monday forced several small ski areas -- including Magic Mountain in Londonderry and Suicide Six in Woodstock -- to close for at least the day.

Mad River Glen, which relies on natural snow, shut down Sunday after just a week, laying off dozens of workers. After 4 to 6 inches of snow fell Tuesday and Wednesday, the Fayston resort vowed to reopen for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

"We're far from packing it in," said spokesman Eric Friedman.

With the arrival of winter this week that dropped as much as 10 inches in western Maine and a storm forecast for Monday, ski areas predicted their season was just kicking in.

"There is plenty of winter ahead of us," said Greg Sweetser, executive of the Ski Maine Association.