The recommendation comes after a lawsuit by The Pape Group convinced the board to form a special committee and hire an independent third party to review the offers and make a recommendation to the board, which it would follow. The independent third party, the Colorado-based investment banking firm of Green, Manning & Bunch, determined that The Pape Group's offer of up to $26,000 per share and no requirement to sell was better than Powdr Corp.'s $20,100 per share offer that requires shareholders to sell their shares but includes lifetime ski passes for shareholders.

James Petersen, Mt. Bachelor Inc.'s general counsel and secretary, tells GlobeSt that the Powdr Corp's offer of lifetime ski passes was not considered in the recommendation because it couldn't not be translated into a per share value. "It could not be done because while five people who owned one share of Mt. Bachelor would get five lifetime passes, one person who owned 100 shares would only get one lifetime pass," says Petersen.

The Pape Group lawsuit came after a majority of shares were tendered to Powdr Corp. despite the lesser offer. As a result of the suit and the new recommendation, the resort's approximately 275 shareholders now must recast their votes by the end of the month or have them not be counted.

Ultimately, insiders expect the outcome to be the same -- Powdr receiving the majority of shares -- because the individual directors of the board and their families own the vast majority of the shares that gave Powdr its initial victory.

Prior to the revote, Powdr said it had received 64% of the resorts outstanding shares. The Pape Group, which started the race with 23%, has never revealed how much of the remaining 13%, if any, it has garnered.

The battle for ownership of the resort began Jan. 9 when the Mt. Bachelor board of directors -- which at the time included Pape Group president Randy Pape -- voted 4-to-3 in favor of declining Powdr's purchase offer. Powdr then went directly to shareholders with its offer, prompting Randy Pape to resign as a board member and make a counteroffer in an attempt to keep the ownership local.