Industry News
10.5 sounds weird, right? Â Well, it’s Jay Peak. Â Jay might reopen this weekend, but they might not. Â They’re gonna have a look at the snow on Wednesday and make their decision.
We lost a lot of ski resorts over the weekend. Â Closing days were plentiful and damn fun.
California, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, Utah, and Canada are still in the game.
Ah, Springtime… Â Park, pipe, shorts, bikinis, hot tubs, hot springs, ice cream, beer, beer guts, sunglasses, stinky sunscreen, hot dogs, ball caps, sunburns, and costumes.
SKI RESORTS STILL OPEN IN NORTH AMERICA:
CALIFORNIA:
Mammoth (no closing date yet – but probably this sunday)
COLORADO:
Arapahoe Basin (June?)
OREGON:
Mt. Bachelor (Memorial Day?)
Timberline (September)
UTAH:
Snowbird (May 17th)
VERMONT:
Jay Peak (might open this weekend…)
Killington (Weekends until June)
CANADA:
Whistler-Blackcomb (May 18th)
Lake Louise (May 10th)
Sunshine Village (May 18th)
Mont Saint-Sauveur (weekends until May 9th)
I was on Bachelor today (Monday) and while things are OK at mid-mountain and above, the base area is melting swiftly. Groomers fill in a path to the two base lifts still running (Pine Marten & Skyliner) but by mid-day they are a minefield of rocks, mud, and slush. I’m on my decade-old rock skis and they’re bottoms look rougher than the surface of the moon. The summit cross-over is now getting lots of rockfall from the moraine as it melts out (I personally picked up more than a dozen egg-to-bowling ball sized rocks off the cross-over today) and the bottom third of the mountain is a patchwork of unmarked dirt hazards. I came over a rise on Cliffhanger at moderate speed today and almost ate it in a bare-patch – how I avoided it I’ll never know… my lizard brain took over!
The Summit lift is still in great shape, though Cow’s Face is starting to melt out, and now involves a traverse well above the top of Rainbow & Sunrise to stay in-bounds. I think it is all but done, as is the West Ridge. The front-side groomers (Beverley and Healy) and the Bowl & Cirque are still skiing great after the corn forms. I ran into folks from Japan, Washington, and California on the lifts, so people are still coming beyond us locals.
The forecast is a mixed bag of rain and snow for the rest of the week, so this could be the end, or a rebirth. We’ll see.
It is honestly a miracle that we’re still skiing in central Oregon after the total lack of a winter we endured in 2015.