Eaglecrest Ski Area is delaying its opening for a third straight weekend, but there’s enough snow on the mountain its grill will be open for people wanting to ski, sled or otherwise explore on their own, General Manager Dave Scanlan said Thursday.
“I’m anticipating our temperatures are going to hold relatively level, so that’s going to help us on the top part of the mountain,” he said. “We haven’t lost a ton of snow at the base of the mountain, but it’s still very, very shallow. There’s not enough for us to open. However, we’re starting to see possibilities for some snowmaking temperatures coming in tomorrow. So we’re watching that like a hawk and hoping that those temperatures are truly going to arrive so we can fire up all of our snowmaking machines. So that could be a game changer for us.”
While people operating snowmakers will hopefully be working this weekend, Scanlan said employees at Eaglecrest Grill will definitely be on the job.
“On the weekends everybody wants to be out in the snow, right?” he said. “So our parking lot will be half-full of people hiking up the mountains, snowshoeing, attempting to Nordic ski, hiking up to the top to ski down where there’s more snow depth. So we’re going to have our Eaglecrest Grill open so when those people are recreating they can at least come in and buy some food. And we’ve got some new staff cooking and cashiering, so it’ll be good training for them.”
The soonest realistic opening date for the lifts is Wednesday, Dec. 20, when the ski area would begin its daily holiday schedule until Jan. 7 (it would be closed Christmas and New Year’s days), Scanlan said.
“Usually after we make snow we like to let the snow that we’ve made — we call it letting it cure — if we let that snow that’s come out of the snowmachines sit for 48 hours before we move it around it spreads a lot further,” he said.
“We’re literally taking it day by day,” Scanlan added. “We want to open as bad as everybody else wants us to.”
The forecast for Juneau calls for rain and snow through at least Saturday, with temperatures ranging from a high of about 40 degrees Thursday to a low in the mid-20s Friday, according to the National Weather Service Juneau. Temperatures at Eaglecrest are forecast to be a few degrees cooler.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
