File Photo
It will be bunny skiing only to kick off a new season at Mount Joy Snow Resort.
Only 50 day-tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis for the Jan. 20-21 opening weekend due to limited snow coverage.
“The weather’s certainly been back and forth on that a lot. It’s been crazy, but this weekend we’ll have the bunny hill open,” said resort president Chris Bogue earlier this week.
“That’s all we can offer this weekend, but rest assured, our crews have been out there to try to get the snow in all the right places so we can get the rest of the runs open.”
They were planning to open last weekend but a wind chill of -50C put the boots to that idea, making this year’s opening day one of the latest in recent memory.
“Going into our third week is really late for us, but like everybody in this industry snow is the biggest asset and it’s hard to come by,” said Bogue.
“If you’re not running into hiccups, how much in the industry are you?”
The resort has been hit by a triple whammy of not enough natural snow, extreme cold temperatures and running the reservoir dry making snow on the beginner slopes.
“By the 26th our pond should be filled again, so we should have snow-making operations starting around then to finish our lift lines and then start a path down the hill from the top,” said Bogue.
He notes the resort has a certain allocation of water they can pull from the well.
“We constantly monitor it as we know it’s a drought year,” said Bogue who has his fingers crossed for a big dump of snow.
“It’s an unpopular opinion with everyone I’ve talked to, but five or six six feet of snow would be really great,” he said.
In the meantime, he invites people to come down and enjoy some warm food and hot drinks on the finished part of the new deck from the cafeteria and have a great first day.
