Vancouver Island’s ski season is back on track after a heavy snowfall on Mount Washington.
The Mount Washington ski resort closed in late January after just 14 days of operations due to lack of snow.
“We’ve got our second opening of the winter season,” Mount Washington spokesperson Brent Curtain chuckled. “We’re firing the lifts up at 9 a.m. [Thursday].”
The dump of snow comes as a big relief, he said.
Mount Washington has received 90 centimetres of snow in the past 48 hours.
The ski resort is reporting a snow base of 120 centimetres, with an overnight snowfall of 24 cm.
The outlook is for even more snow to fall, Curtain said. “The thing that really pushes us over the top and made the decision to open easy is the fact that the forecast is calling for significant accumulations over the next few days.”
Environment Canada meteorologist David Jones said the Courtenay-area resort could see as much as a metre of snow over the next week.
“They’re going to get back in a hurry here, it looks like.”
The change in fortune at Mount Washington couldn’t come quickly enough for related business in Victoria.
“Bring on the snow,” said Drew Garbutt, who works in the ski department at Sports Traders. “We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when.”
Staff laid off from the hill have already started coming back.
“We’ve had our operations crews out on the hills getting the lifts and the slopes ready,” Curtain said. “And a lot of it’s turn-key because we already prepared for the season.”
A large portion of Mount Washington’s 400 out-of-work staffers will be back on the job right away, Curtain said.
“The idea is to get to regular winter operations as quickly as possible.”
Word of the opening spread quickly.
“Social media has been going crazy the last couple of days. Obviously, it’s not too late in the season. Skiers and boarders are still excited.”
Curtain said it is also nice to be back with the Winter Olympics in full swing. Televisions at Ted’s, the resort’s pub, have been tuned to the action in Sochi, he said.
“You can come and ski some powder and then go watch some great TV.”
Courtenay snowboarder Spencer O’Brien, who competed in the Olympic slopestyle event last weekend, spent a lot of time at Mount Washington during her development.
Jones said Mount Washington and other B.C. ski hills are benefiting from a return to normal winter weather patterns.
“Basically the pattern completely shifted,” he said. “The storms are coming across the Pacific one after another, and the storm track is just far enough south that the freezing level is great for the ski hills.”
Jones said the freezing level will stay low enough over the next week to keep the snow coming at ski spots.
“It looks like a great pattern for the resorts. Finally, it’s here. We’ve been waiting for a storm cycle like this forever, it seems.”
The resort’s website shows that for the day the Stomping Ground terrain park is open but the Easy Acres terrain park is closed. Lifts for the Boomerang Quad, Hawk 6 Pack, Eagle Quad, Sunrise Quad, Whiskey Jack, Under/Middle/Lower/Teaching Carpet and Tubing Park are all open for the day.
— with a file from Cindy E. Harnett
