Jack Gorka figured he’d come out for one last blast on the ski hills Saturday.
“The weather is kind of iffy, but it’s still OK,” said the Toronto grandfather who ventured out to Snow Valley Ski Resort to ski with his daughter and three grandchildren. “It’s probably one of the last days we’re here.”
With rain in the forecast, Gorka’s gang had plenty of shushing space to themselves, ending an otherwise busy March break for local ski hills.
Coming off two years of pandemic interruptions, local operators were generally delighted with this year, even with the restrictions and new processes they’ve adopted, some of them now permanent.
And even with the weekend rain.
“We’ve gone from mid-winter conditions to spring conditions in just a matter of days, really,” said Jonathan Palmer, Snow Valley's marketing director, adding that the end of March break also brings an end to night skiing and signals a gradual winding down of the season.
“It’s been a really decent March break and we’re really looking forward to at least another week.”
The plan is to run the lifts at the Barrie area ski hill from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. right to March 27. If weather allows, he added, that could be extended.
The season, overall, has been a strong one even with capacity limits.
Local ski hills were able to open in time for the Christmas season, which accounts for close to 30 per cent of their business, said Robert Huter, general manager of Mount St. Louis Moonstone.
And both the pandemic and the weather allowed for an uninterrupted season, which included Ontario’s first skiable March Break in three years.
“We were out of the box with a strong start and that momentum just kept going right through the season,” said Huter.
So even if this year was just a normal ski season, it seemed like an extraordinary accomplishment when compared to the previous two seasons, quipped Tara Lovell, Blue Mountain’s public relations manager.
“After having two winter seasons with shutdowns, lots of strange things to navigate… those are very hard winters to get out of,” she said. “This winter, we were sure about our adaptations in response to COVID-19.”
Blue Mountain is now looking toward Easter, having come off March break with 39 of its 42 runs still open.
“From here we’ll just play the game with Mother Nature,” said Lovell, “and just keep going until we can’t.”
And then the resort looks toward its green season with a target opening date of the Victoria Day long weekend.
Right now, said Lovell, skiers hope to revel in spring skiing, which includes apres ski activities indoors and out. And given the pandemic, Blue has more outdoor opportunities than it did two years ago.
“We did adapt our operations a lot in response to COVID-19,” many of which will continue operations, weather allowing, said Lovell. “We know the demand is there.
“I’m not sure if that’s a ski culture thing or people still have certain apprehension about eating outdoors.”
At the top of the hill, the Off Piste patio outdoor seating area with firepits and music, serviced with a barbecue and smoker area as well as a bar, has been well-received.
There are also new and expanded patios at the base of the lodge in the resort’s village area.
As they look to next season local snow resort operators say there are some practices they adopted during the pandemic that they’ll keep in place.
Mount St. Louis is operating under the premise that the protocols they’ve ended the season with are the same ones they’ll start next season with.
“We’ll assess to see how the summer goes… and then we’ll make the decisions at that point,” said Huter. “What has come out of this is we’re cautious.”
It’s easier to lift the precautions later than it is to reinstate them, he adds.
A big keeper is online sales and online booking.
“What it’s been able to do is predict who is going to be here and allows us to better schedule and better utilize the staff that’s here and control those numbers that allows people to have a better experience,” said Snow Valley’s Palmer.
A challenge for all the hills has been staffing and accessing the number of workers they require. Whether a shallow labour pool had to do with wages or pandemic hesitation wasn’t clear. But operators say that’s a consideration as they plan for next season.
