Australian skiers are suffering at the hands of Murphy’s law as bucket loads of snow continues to fall after last weekend’s closing.
The Aussie snow season has thrown many a temper tantrum this year with rain and wind and powder snow and rain again. The mood swings continued on the closing weekend just gone as Mother Nature decided to spit the dummy with a mammoth snow storm that may as well have come with a middle finger.
The first storm came through in time for the long weekend with 40cms of snowfall and then another 60cms+ was reported to have fallen in the 48 hours after season closing. Word on the snow vine is that temperatures will warm this weekend before even more snow on the way next week.
So NOW the question on everyone’s lips is why haven’t the Australian snow resorts extended their season?
It’s easy to ask when you’re social media newsfeed is filled with images like this.
So, on behalf of you, we asked the Aussie resorts that same question.
Why haven’t you kept at least some lifts turning?
And here are the answers.
Thredbo
“It does not make commercial sense to open beyond our advertised season dates this year – apart from the logistical challenges of lifting, grooming and other seasonal staff having finished for the year and off to their next destination.
If there was a material population base within a two hour drive of the resort, it may be different but with new snow coming on the back of warm temperatures and green hills just a few days ago, it is unlikely Australians would come to ski in October at short notice. We also have little confidence the snow cover we see on the lower slopes today will be there in a day or two.
Thredbo actually never close we just swap over to summer operations. There is a chairlift that operates year round so those keen for some October turns can access the beautiful backcountry.” Thredbo Spokesperson
Perisher
“Perisher has a history of opening early and often extending the season when conditions allow. When Perisher has extended the season in previous years the decision and announcement has been made 3-4 weeks prior to the season end date so that we can plan and manage our staffing levels, give emergency service and other service providers sufficient notice and to allow guests enough time to plan for a late season visit which in turn helps to drive visitation making it viable for the resort.
The snowfall in Perisher over the last few days as the resort closed for the winter was unexpected and very late which in turn means the resort was not able to prepare for an extension of the 2016 winter. We don’t believe that with a only few days’ notice of the extension that could have been given after the recent snowfalls, it would be viable given most of our customers have already made plans to go to the warming parts of Australia for their second week of the School Holidays.” Richard Phillips, Perisher
Mt Buller
“At Mt Buller we often do open to respond to demand when there is snow and have done early season and late. However when there are very few guests visiting resort and conditions are very variable it essentially becomes a business decision. It makes little sense to operate lifts, keep on hundreds of staff and open venues for such small numbers. That was the situation when we chose to wrap up on 25th September.
This season on the 21st September snow conditions were rapidly deteriorating and the forecast was for another week of poor weather so the decision was made to wrap up rather than prolong the season when the guest experience wasn’t likely to be great. At that point many runs were just holding in and only going to make it to the Sunday.
Mother Nature has since had some fun with us and delivered a couple of big, late snowfalls but sadly it’s not practical to reopen operations for just a day or so when most skiers and snowboarders are done for the winter. It is however magical for the visitors who choose to drive up, explore and snow play in the village right now and make the most of these last flourishes of winter.” Rhylla Morgan, Mt Buller
OVERSEAS DO IT, WHY CAN’T WE?
Aspen extended their last season and then even re-opened and turned the lifts on the top half of Aspen Mountain for locals on weekends for weeks after the season closed. Vail extended their closing weekend by a week and Winter Park extended their season until May for only the second time in their operating history.
Before you start your own dummy spit and rant about the overseas resorts extending their 2015/2016 season when snow came late, we asked them how they did it too.
Aspen Snowmass, Colorado
“Obviously the fundamental question is how are conditions. Since we generally have snowfall well into May and our base depths continue to grow through April we should be able to extend the season most years. So assuming we have snow, then we look at forecasts…if we are continuing with cold and snow it makes the decision easy. Warm temps make grooming a challenge…we need it to get close to freezing or below at night. The final component is do we have enough snow for lifts to operate safely (ramps at the top and bottom).
My philosophy is if we have decent or better skiing, we should be open, so the real question is “why shouldn’t we be open”? The community generally seems to support that concept given the numbers we’ve done in the past.
Once we know we are extending, we’ll begin the staffing process, pulling in lift operators, patrol, food and beverage, tickets, groomers and lift maintenance. We’ll pull from all the mountains, so you can see Buttermilk lift attendants on Aspen. I notify the Forest Service, Sheriff’s Office, hospital, RFTA etc. If a big storm hit after first close, we’d bring in crews to do some snow control (like this past season at Highlands).
For extended seasons we don’t use seasonal operators…we pull all the supervisors from the four mountains (9), we have a couple year round operators on Aspen (summer/winter) and we use lift maintenance crews that are also year round. We have a pool of around 50 to draw from and we are generally only running two or three lifts.
Finally, we generally open for summer operations on Aspen Mountain on Memorial Day. Many years we’ve had the ability to ski then. We don’t plow our roads, we leave the tower pads in place etc. to help make it easy to start summer off with skiing if we can.” Richard Birkley, Aspen Snowmass
Yes, we asked Vail too. They extended their closing weekend by a week.
“In the U.S., we often set the closing date according to when Easter falls as it’s typically a time when both domestic and international guests take their spring breaks or Easter holidays.
Extending the season requires the right conditions, weather and other operational functions to be aligned. Often, despite the great snow, our guests begin to think about other activities, especially as the weather begins to warm up in surrounding areas outside the mountains. They’re dusting off the golf clubs and bicycles in anticipation of summer.
If the right conditions permit, we have been known to extend the season a bit, which offers the greatest benefit to local powder hounds and pass holders.” Abigail Hein, Vail Resorts
Let’s not forget Winter Park who had a huge season and a two metre plus snow base.
“Unfortunately, there’s no benchmark of snowfall that we have to reach in order to extend, it’s literally a year-by-year (and sometimes month-by-month) decision. For example, last March we picked up 61” (154 cm) of snow in the month alone, which lifted our base above 90” (228 cm), so we had a pretty good idea in early April that we’d be able to keep part of our mountain open longer than our initial closing date of April 26.
As we progressed through April, it became apparent that the snowpack would allow us to stay open two extra weeks to May 7, which is the only the second time we’ve open into May in our history. Ultimately, it comes down to how much snow we’ve received late and the weather forecast for the time we anticipate staying open.
Seasonal workers is by far the biggest consideration when we decide to alter the dates of the season, so we try and make a decision as early as we can. Last year, it was about three weeks prior to our scheduled closing. Since it’s just a portion of the mountain that’s open, it’s not too difficult to assemble a skeleton crew of people who want to stay and get paid for a couple of extra weeks. But if we can’t staff the mountain, it doesn’t matter how much snow is on the ground, we can’t stay open.” Steve Hurlbert, Winter Park
Sigh
So, there you have it, make of it what you will. If Mother Nature had given us some warning, then planning would have meant a later lift turning season. But me thinks she’s got a lot of power and can do whatever the hell she likes and it would appear she does and is.
The new question is, are you going to hike? Well, are you?
Of course if you’re still chomping at the bit, here’s an idea….
And to rub salt into the wound Thredbo have the snow cams showing just great the conditions are there up on the mountain.