Don’t be fooled by the lack of snow in the valley.
Mt. Timothy Ski Area is still a winter wonderland, said mountain operations manager Morgan Day.
“Conditions are awesome,” Day said. “Last weekend was honestly the best weekend of the season as far as conditions go. We got some more snow Sunday night and last week we had just over a foot of brand new snow. There’s tons of powder riding and we had great weather over the weekend.”
Currently sitting on a 160 centimetre base, there’s still plenty of riding to be had this ski season.
“Everyone gets thrown off by the no snow in town but as long as people call the snow phone or check us on Facebook they can see we have tons of snow,” he said.
The ski area did experience a slight setback two weeks ago when both of its groomers broke down and parts for maintenance needed to be ordered.
“Both machines have been fixed,” he said.
The hill also recently opted into an interesting international consortium of community and independent ski areas, Day said, known as the Mountain Playground Group.
Facilitated by the U.S.-based Mountain Rider’s Alliance (MRA), participating ski areas will band together to increase skier visits and share best practice and marketing strategies.
“They’re mostly comprised of small ski areas, like Mt. Timothy,” Day said. “It’s a group teaming up together to help each other in different areas like marketing and web design. A lot of small areas don’t have budgets to do a lot in those types of areas at the same magnitude as the large ski areas.”
The MRA has a large group of volunteers within the alliance who donate their time providing advice in those key areas.
They also host regular roundtable discussions via conference call where participating ski areas discuss various mountain and industry practices.
“It’s a pretty cool opportunity to have that close of contact with other people in the industry on a regular basis,” Day said. “The only real time you get to talk with other individuals in the industry is during the Canada West conferences in the spring and fall, which is good, but it’s a nice opportunity to keep in close contact with other hills.”
Mt. Timothy Ski Area will host a rail jam this weekend and has several events lined up for March and over spring break, including another day of 50 per cent off lift passes, plus a retro day and more.
“For the younger kids we’re going to be getting our terrain park going hopefully by the end of the month,” he said.
Mt. Timothy Ski Area is open Wednesday through Sunday this week.