As morning frost tickles the valley areas of the Northeast, there has also been occasional snowfall in the higher elevations and that is piquing interest in the upcoming ski season.
During a recent October cold snap, snow fell in the Adirondacks and Green Mountains. Taking advantage of the freezing temperatures, Killington fired up its snow guns. The ski resort was testing the snow making systems as they try to again be the first resort in the Northeast to open for the season.
At neighboring Smuggler’s Notch Director of Communications Kelly Mohr says diehard snow enthusiasts plodded up the mountain to try a few runs back down the slopes.
“People got really excited with the first snow. We got about 10 inches on the top of Sterling. We have a number of people hiking up and skiing down already,” Mohr reported. “So, it’s got everybody kind of jazzed up for the winter. I mean it’s gone now, but yeah, we got about 8 to 10 inches on the top of Sterling
Ski Vermont Director of Communications Bryan Rivard says as soon as snow starts dusting the mountains, word on social media spreads, people get excited and ski resorts gear up for the ski season.
“When that cold weather comes there’s onboarding of staff. They’ll be doing their trainings of ski patrol or any of their instructors and kind of welcoming everyone back for the season or their ambassador programs. And then of course it’s getting snowmaking on line, making sure everything’s operating appropriately, doing their tests. Particularly in Vermont we have the strongest snowmaking system in the world,” noted Rivard. “So a lot of that does revolve around maintenance. Killington just announced $30 million over the next two seasons that are going to be invested in snowmaking. They’re going to be unveiling 500 new snow guns across the mountain just this season. Stratton got $2 million coming into snowmaking. So a lot of it really comes down to making sure that they can set the stage for a great ski experience and a lot of that means having staff ready to go and making sure that they have snow on the slopes.”
Rivard says resorts are reporting good advance bookings and season pass sales. But it’s not necessarily due to snow on the slopes.
“I think people are a lot more comfortable doing that with all of the additional programming that there are at the resorts. Where you have things that you can do for folks that might not want to ski every single day,” Rivard explained. “There’s tubing, there’s snowshoeing, there’s a lot of off-slope activities. So even if you’ve got your ski legs in for the day and you want to go and do something else or your kids are tired, they want to go have another activity you can do that. So I think people are a lot more comfortable going in and pre-booking these trips when they know that there’s a lot of options and a lot of different ways to entertain themselves and their families when they come up here.”
Rivard notes that Vermont’s resorts have been improving their facilities and snowmaking capabilities for decades, allowing them to extend the ski season.
“The ski areas have been very forward thinking in efficiency projects. They’ve done over 700. They started doing this kind of work in the early 2000’s and with the technological advances they have in snowmaking now it really is incredible,” Rivard enthusiastically notes. “And so they’re just able to make snow much more efficiently in much tighter windows with much fewer resources. And so it really does extend the season and I think it does help to bookend the ski season and also fill in any of those gaps when snow might be a little light.”
A unique term was being heard across Vermont as the early October snow offered a backdrop to fall foliage: snoliage.
“We went from summer to winter pretty quick,” Mohr recalls. “It’s just so beautiful when you see the snow at the top and then the bright colors of the mountain. It’s a really, it’s special. You don’t get that everywhere.”
Many Vermont ski resorts are targeting opening over the Thanksgiving holiday
