Industry News
10.5 sounds weird, right? Well, it’s Jay Peak. Jay might reopen this weekend, but they might not. 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. Closing days were plentiful and damn fun.
California, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, Utah, and Canada are still in the game.
Ah, Springtime… 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.