Forget chocolate. This week, Mother Nature offered skiers and snowboarders a gift from Valentine’s Day that they can enjoy all weekend.
The snowfall of monsters that covered a large part of the center and eastern Canada this week, interrupting traffic and causing days of snow for many, gives an elevator.
“It was a redemptive season for Mother Nature with regard to ski hills in Ontario, that’s for sure,” Tara Lovell, public relations manager at Blue Mountain Resort, said.
Large snowfall generally lead to an influx of people visiting the hills, she said.
Pearson International Airport in Toronto had seen about 26 centimeters of snowfall before a large winter storm swept Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Flights to the main airports have been delayed or canceled, and public transport agencies reduced the service while the owners have shovel the snow of their aisles and their steps.
Yves Juneau, CEO of the Association of Quebec Ski Stations (ASSQ), representing the ski resort industry in the province, called a snow gift on Thursday.
“For us, it’s like a Valentine’s Day gift for skiers and snowboard lovers because it’s really an excellent marketing for us, it puts skiing in the minds of people and … C … ‘is really positive for marketing and timing is really perfect. “
“It’s just before the weekend, so it should be a weekend busy in ski centers across Quebec,” he said, adding the family’s weekend in family day Ontario should only add to the crowd.
The total of the season at Blue Mountain has so far more than 300 centimeters, said Lovell. This, the more the snow capacity on the majority of their area, means that Blue Mountain is “very well installed to go directly to the end of spring when it comes to the ski season here,” she said.
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Natalie Bennett, deputy director general of Craigleith Ski Club near Collingwood, Ontario, agreed that this week’s snowfall is a good omen for club members hoping for a longer season than usual.
“I have heard comments that people may hope that we will be able to ski Easter,” she said.
“It’s a big bonus all around.”
Several installations of the province plan to be opened until then in April after the abundant president of snowfall, said the president of Ontario Snow Resorts Association, Kevin Nichol, in an email.
This year, the Alpine ski areas were able to stop making snow early, he added.
“It is perfect for using snow to build a base, then let Mother Nature provide an excellent ski area. This is what many Ontario complexes are going through this season, “said Nichol.
Many ski hills are counting on artificial snow to stimulate the supply of white stuff. The technology consists in using machines to spray a mixture of water and compressed air, which turns into snowflakes, and it is not new; The Canadian ski industry has used it since the 1950s.
But this should become even more important because climate change upsets the usual seasonal models.
Lovell said snow completes snowfall, helping to keep the powder coherent for skiers. Due to the weaker elevation in Ontario, she said that ski hills in the province count more on snow than those in the West.
“The complement of snow with natural snow actually makes a better ski experience,” she said.
It has already been a big season, said Bennett, and artificial snow is one of them.
“We have certainly still done snow, but … when you mix both, you know, artificial snow and natural snow, and a good amount of natural snow, it really creates a different winter ski experience “She said.
This winter was cold very early, helping to increase snow capacities, said Lovell.
But a snow spill like the one that Ontario has obtained this week does not mean that the employees of Blue Mountain are stoned. Lovell said the complex must “prepare” hills – for example, they must make sure that lifting areas have the right slope.
After a large snowfall like this, “it means that we have to navigate in different snow depths in grooming,” she said.
Thursday’s storm means that all the hills of Quebec will be operational this weekend, said Juneau. About 16 hills still have no artificial snow operations and require that Mother Nature cooperates so that they can open.
“With this storm, the 75 ski areas will be active,” said Juneau. “We cannot expect better ski conditions than this weekend and the coming weeks.”
While 2024 was not actually a year of banner in the event of snow, Juneau said that 2023 was the best season for the previous 16 years. Meanwhile, 2025 looks like another solid year, with coherent snowfall since New Year’s Day and forecasts providing that hills will be open during the Easter weekend.
For some parts of the center and eastern Canada, including southern Ontario and southern Quebec, more snow is still expected before the weekend. For some, it is also a long weekend, with a vacation Monday in several provinces.
British Columbia ski resorts have not had large snowfalls in recent days, but they still enjoy the advantages of a large discharge received at the beginning of the month.
Whistler Blackcomb, north of Vancouver and Big White inside British Columbia, both say that snow conditions are “wrapped” before the weekend. Both signal snowfall lower than the average this season, but it is an improvement compared to a dismal last season when many British Columbia stations were forced to close tracks in the middle of hot temperatures, uneven rain and snow.
– with Sidhartha Banerjee files in Montreal