On one of the worst weather days of the season, skiers at Mount Bachelor on Saturday were wishing for powder the white kind.

But they, as well as Mount Bachelor employees, also had mostly good things to say about Powdr Corp., the Utah-based corporation that announced last week that it had acquired enough shares of stock to take over control of Mount Bachelor Inc.

John Cumming, Powdr Corp.’s president, said Friday afternoon that the company has purchased or has tender offers for nearly 60 percent of Mount Bachelor’s 1,382 outstanding shares.

He said any remaining shareholders who want to sell would get the same price: $20,100 per share.

According to Mount Bachelor Secretary James Petersen, the board of directors has scheduled a special meeting for Monday to consider Cumming’s request to waive a state law known as the Oregon Control Share Act, which is designed to help companies fight off hostile takeovers.

A board decision to waive the law would pave the way for Powdr Corp. to take over majority ownership of Mount Bachelor, and Cumming said shareholders would get their money within days.

A rival bidder for Mount Bachelor, Pape Group of Eugene, hasn’t disclosed how much stock it has acquired. However, Pape Group, led by President Randy Pape, alone owns 23 percent of Mount Bachelor.

Skiers and employees interviewed at the mountain resort Saturday said they supported a possible change in management.

”Pape has done a marvelous job building lifts, and this is in no way to degrade him or former management, but I think Powdr represents a professional infusion of skills and capital that would be beneficial to Mount Bachelor,” said Steward McCollom Sr., 72, as he dried out in the lodge at mid-morning.

McCollom, a former teen-age skiing buddy of Mount Bachelor founder Bill Healy, was soaked nearly to the skin after just a couple of runs in the rain falling on the mountain Saturday.

Mount Bachelor employees Bernie Cooley, a ski technician, and Darlene Eakin, a ski instructor, agreed.

”(Powdr) has a bit more experience running ski areas, and they know how to work with employees,” Cooley said. ”That’s what’s been needed, as well as to have the community more involved with Mount Bachelor. I think it’s a good deal for the mountain.”

Eakin praised Bachelor for its program of offering free ski and snowboard lessons to area sixth-graders.

”But it’s really too expensive for local families to ski,” said Eakin, a mother of three grown daughters and a grandmother. ”It’s just prohibitive. Powdr has a reputation of working with communities not that Randy wouldn’t.

”But Bachelor has worked extremely hard to be a first-class resort for those traveling here, and we’ve forgotten the people who live here.”

That’s also the feeling of John Caccamo of Bend.

”I think Bachelor has a really bad reputation for not doing things for the locals,” he said. ”I used to live in Colorado, and there they took care of the people who lived nearby.”

Scott Gilbert of Seattle, who has been skiing at Mount Bachelor for 15 years, didn’t know Powdr from powder. But he does know what he’d add to Mount Bachelor lodging and other amenities at the base of the mountain.

”I’m pretty pleased with the facilities, but lodging is pretty much far away,” he said. ”I’d like to see them make a village up here.”

Edward Stambulski of Milwaukie, near Portland, had similar feelings. ”With all the high-speed quads, Mount Bachelor is one of the best mountains you can ski,” he said. ”What would be good is lodging up here.”

But Stambulski wasn’t so sure that out-of-state ownership would be such a good idea.

”On one hand, it could be good because big corporations have the money for upgrades and things,” he said. ”But they also can be pretty detached from local areas.”

The biggest complaint of Stambulski and others? Rising lift ticket prices.

”When I started skiing here I paid $30,” he said. ”Now it’s $43.”