THUNDER BAY — With the weather warming up and the snow melting rapidly, it’s no surprise local ski hills are preparing for the seasons end.
They're just not ready to close up shop yet.
Staff at Loch Lomond and Mount Baldy are hopeful they'll be able to keep the hills open until mid April.
“We'll see what happens in the next couple of days,” said Daniel Karas, owner of Mount Baldy Ski Area.
“We're keeping our fingers crossed that the weatherman's wrong, but at the end of the day, in the last couple of years it's been pretty hard and this season we've had a really good year.
“Hopefully we're going to keep cruising into mid April. I don't have a crystal ball. We'll see what happens, but by the long-range forecast, it looks like we're going to be good this year,” Kardas said.
Lyndsay Gerry, ski school director at Loch Lomond Ski Area, is hoping for a mid-April end to the season as well.
“We have the dummy downhill on March 30, so if we can stay open longer through that, the start of April, that would be amazing. It really just depends on how our conditions are doing,” she said.
Gerry and Kardas agreed the dumps of snow have been crucial for the hills this year.
“Our snow school has been doing amazing. We had about 80 kids in our ski school March Break camp, which is groundbreaking for our ski school,” she said.
Overall, Loch Lomond has been busy this year, Gerry said.
The conditions helped both ski hills during March Break.
“We've been having a pretty good March Break, lots of people out, lots of nice sunshine, so it's been super fun, super good conditions, we've been really lucky,” Gerry said.
“You can't get better than this, so this is probably one of our best years ever,” Kardas said.
