Greetings,
By now you know that Okemo has opened for the season! It was a yeoman’s effort from everyone. While
the snowmakers and groomers were doing their job, the rest of the staff were
hard at work getting everything ready to open 10 days early. There are so many departments which must work
together to get the resort up and going.
They were all given 48 hours’ notice and pulled it off great. It is like trying to get the train going, it
takes some time, but once it gets moving, it keeps on chugging along.
We have had some good weather for snowmaking and this has
allowed our snowmakers to move quickly.
This weekend we are at 7 trails and 2 lifts. While we are continuing to
shuttle up to the Northstar lift, I am glad to say that we are no longer downloading
as World Cup is open from top to bottom.
So where are we headed?
For the next few days it looks like the snowmakers will have a couple
days off. Snowmaking temps look to be
returning by Tuesday night. Once the
temperatures return, the plan will be to patch up needed areas on existing
terrain and then head for new terrain. We are very close, probably just one
night of snowmaking away, from completing the Sapphire, Upper Arrow, Double
Dipper connection down into the base of the Green Ridge Triple. Once this is the plan will be to begin to
expand towards Solitude as well as the Rimrock area. This time of the year we have to follow the
temperatures and normally that means up on the summit areas. If there are any temperatures in the base
area, we will head there as our number #1 goal will be to have top to bottom
skiing from the base area. We are very
optimistic about having much more terrain for the Thanksgiving holiday. The
Terrain park staff has some rails and features out on the slopes and will
expand this as we add more terrain.
Our November 8th opening was the fourth
earliest in the history of Okemo. The
earliest was the 97/98 season when we opened on Halloween, although we had to
close as the temps went up. The earliest
opening day and staying open was 02/03 on November 2nd. Okemo was the 2nd resort in
Vermont to open and the 3rd in New England this season. The work that was done on our snowmaking
system this past summer and the capital purchase of new snowguns has paid off
with early season snow.
Thanks for your support and enjoy the snow.
Bruce Schmidt
Okemo GM
