Whitefish ski resort postpones opening day
Fresh snow covers a stairway that leads to Chair 6 at Whitefish Mountain Resort on Saturday, Dec. 4. (Matt Baldwin/Daily Inter Lake)
For the first time in 10 years, Whitefish Mountain Resort has decided to delay its stated opening day.
On Monday afternoon the resort opted to pull the plug on its plan to open Tuesday for the winter season due to a lack of snow. The last time this happened was ahead of the 2011-12 winter season when the resort planned to open on Dec. 3, 2011, and then delayed it one week, according to resort spokesman Chad Sokol.
The resort now hopes to begin spinning its lifts for the 2021-22 season on Thursday, conditions permitting.
“We’re going to shoot for Thursday now — that is still a moving target but we’re pretty hopeful that we’ll have at least a few more inches by then,” Sokol said Monday.
The resort operations team spent much of Monday morning deliberating about the decision to postpone, but ultimately decided they were not comfortable opening with the current conditions.
“Folks have been skinning up on the mountain already and definitely able to get down, but we’re just not thrilled about the amount of snow we have so far,” Sokol said.
Over the weekend the mountain tallied roughly 9 inches of new snow, and that brought the base at the summit to 25 inches. It was not quite enough, though, to combat the snowpack issues created by record-high temperatures last week that melted much of the snow at lower elevations and delayed snowmaking efforts across the mountain.
More storms are forecasted to hit the area this week, including one that should hit the resort Tuesday night and last into Wednesday. Accumulations of up to 4 inches of snow could fall on the slopes, according to the National Weather Service.
The resort said although it's always a bit of a guessing game, the lift that is likely to be open on Thursday is Chair 7. Chair 1 will be transporting skiers to the summit and downloading on the chair will likely be needed from the summit back to the Village. The resort added that Chair 6 will also most likely not be running and folks will need to use the shuttle or coordinate alternate travel between the Base Lodge parking areas and the Village in order to access Chair 1.
The resort will post regular updates on its social media, or for more information visit skiwhitefish.com.