The barren and brown landscape on your drive to Castle Mountain Resort doesn’t look very promising, but it’s a different story at the base of the ski hill.
“We picked our opening date back in March of last year and we made it, but we just made it,” said Jason Crawford with Castle Mountain Resort.
The conditions are far from ideal with only a few lower mountain runs open.
“We’ve had quite an interesting go with the weather this year. A few weeks ago it looked like we were ready to open and then the pineapple express came through and it had its way with the mountain,” added Crawford.
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For mountain enthusiasts like Cam Motta, the lack of snow didn’t matter. Most are just excited for the season to start.
“Oh, we have been waiting so long, it was so nice to see some snowflakes this morning,” said Motta.
Brian Hodgson is a die-hard skier, he said the brown start to the ski season doesn’t have him worried.
“I’ve pretty much seen it all, I’ve seen worse than this and so you know what, it’s mother nature; we can only wait,” added Hodgson.
Since mother nature wasn’t co-operating with opening day deadline, staff called on neighbours to make it themselves.
“We were lucky we got a water diversion licence last week so we are able to make some snow on our lower level terrain, and the Pass Powderkeg in the Crowsnest Pass lent us two of their old snow guns and we were able to get them up and running and we’ve been making snow ever since,” added Crawford.
For now, just the green chair and the buckaroo area are open but with more snow in the forecast this coming week, the staff is optimistic more slopes will open up in the coming days.
“We should see snow almost every day in the next week and then obviously the big storm coming on Tuesday or Wednesday. We’ve got our fingers crossed on that one that it’s going to turn our season around,” said Crawford.