Although the heavy rainfall and high winds that struck Vermont on Monday turned ski resorts’ promising blankets of snow into slush, several have since reopened trails.
Bolton Valley and Mad River Glen, which both closed on Monday, were showing several trails reopened as of week’s end. Bolton Valley had 17 of 71 available on Friday, while Mad River Glen had four of 53, according to their websites.
Earlier in the week, operators at both resorts expressed little concern about the wet weather this early in the season — though for different reasons.
According to Scott Pelligrini, Bolton Valley’s director of marketing and revenue, the resort has continuously invested in snowmaking over the past few years, which is paying off in weather events like these.
“The natural snow is certainly impacted heavily by bogs and meltdowns or rain events, or whatever you want to call them, and then the snowmaking snow tends to hold up really well,” Pelligrini said.
That’s also true at Stowe Mountain Resort, where Communications Manager Joe Healy on Friday said the resort — which remained open through the storm — is “right back where we want to be.” Its website showed 32 of 127 trails open by Friday.
“Our snowmaking crews are really amazing,” he said.
On the other hand, Mad River Glen, in Waitsfield, has “always relied on natural snow,” Matt Lillard, the resort’s general manager, said on Monday. “So we are at the whims of Mother Nature more than a lot of ski areas that have extensive snowmaking.”
But the resort has prepared, Lillard said, by deemphasizing its reliance on holiday tourism, which comes too early in the season for reliable snow — especially amid Vermont’s changing climate.
“We haven’t really counted on a good Christmas holiday, from a budget standpoint, for many years. If we have snow, it’s kind of a bonus, and if we don’t, we know that’s going to happen,” Lillard said.
As a consequence, Monday’s weather was not disastrous.
“The expensive closures at this time of year are very manageable. We’re not usually used to being open with very much at this point in time. So this doesn’t nearly affect us as much as a closure would happen, let’s say, January or February,” Lillard said.
To open some smaller lifts, the resort still uses manufactured snow and will likely have to include snowmaking as an option in the future. But, according to Lillard, “for the foreseeable future, we’ll continue to manage.”
Other than the slush resorts had to deal with, road and lane closures, such as a single-lane closure on Route 108 near Stowe Resort, threatened to cause delays. However, Healy said there was no detectable impact on visits over the week. And on Friday, the road returned to two lanes in anticipation of the big holiday crowd visiting the ski resort this weekend.
According to Ernie Patnoe, the acting division director for maintenance in the Agency of Transportation, the opening is a temporary fix for a smooth holiday weekend, and he expects a more permanent assessment and repair to occur after the holidays.
