The staff at Mt. Timothy Ski Area, along with Ullr, the Norse God of snow, have been busy making sure the hill will be in mint condition for its opening Friday.
Morgan Day, terrain park and events manager, said staff have been track packing for the past few weeks making sure the hill’s runs are in great shape.
“We’re sitting around 50 centimetres for the base,” Day said. “We’ve opened with more, but we’ve also opened with quite a bit less.
“We had a lot of volunteer hours put in this fall and did some pretty substantial brushing, so it’s made a huge difference on a lot of the main runs. We’re pretty stoked for that and to get off to a good start as far as the skiing and riding goes.”
With a chilly high of -19C forecasted for Friday, but with temperatures expected to rise to the negative teens by Saturday and warming up even more Sunday, Day said they’re expecting a good weekend.
Outside of the brushing work and track packing of runs, Day said Mt. Timothy is happy to welcome a new kitchen manager to run the cafeteria for the season, Jackie Paul, formerly of Clancy’s in Lac La Hache.
“We’re pretty excited to have her and her team up here,” Day said. “They’re going to be kind of more what people are used to up at the hill as far as food goes — burgers, fries, all the heart-warming stuff on a cold day.”
Mt. Timothy also has three new webcams setup at the hill, which feed directly to the hill’s website at www.skitimothy.com for skiers and riders to get the most up-to-date views of the conditions.
“It’s going to be pretty sweet to have. For the first time people can go online and see what the hill looks like that day,” he said.
Additionally, through an energy efficiency grant, Day said staff were able to complete multiple improvements to the day lodge and base area.
“We got to upgrade a bunch of our doors, some windows, replaced a bunch of roofing on the lodge, as well as we totally redid our water filtration system in the day lodge which is a skookum second-to-none unit,” he said. “Little things a lot of people might not see that are going to be making a big difference this season.”
Following Mt. Timothy’s opening Friday, the hill will be open every day throughout the holidays, with the exception of Christmas.
Hours of operation currently for the lifts will be from 9 a.m. until 3:20 p.m.
