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The weather wasn’t just putting a damper on car batteries and furnaces, it was hurting local businesses.
The extreme cold that blanketed most of the province forced some ski hills in Saskatchewan to close over one of its busiest weeks, February break.
“We’re prepared to close a few times throughout the year, we understand we live in Saskatchewan, but it’s sure sucks when it lines up over February break,” said Anders Svenson, business manager at Mission Ridge Winter Park in Fort Qu’Appelle.
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The park had to close at least four times during the cold snap according to Svenson.
“That affects everybody because a lot of people plan well ahead,” he said.
Some brave adventure seekers still hit the sloped during cold temperatures, but Svenson had to make a call when temperatures became dangerously low.
“It got to the point where our outside operations team just said, ‘I think this is becoming dangerous.’ We’re putting people up on a chair lift in -40 C . It’s not safe,” Svenson said.
He hopes the winter warm-up brings out more people for what’s left of the break.
“It’s gonna be busy,” he said. “Our tube park is nearly sold out for the rest of the week.”
Svenson asks anyone coming to the park this weekend to be patient.
“We’ve got a lot of people that wanted to get out over the February break and ski,” he said. “I imagine most of them will still do it. It’s going to be compressed in the last couple of days, rather than spread out over the whole week.”
But his staff are ready for it.
As for the rest of the season, Svenson is optimistic.
“Our school program is fully sold out,” he said. “It has been since about the middle of October. So we’ve got upwards of 200 to 225 school kids every weekday for the rest of the season.”
The long-range forecast is also looking good for the park.
“Hopefully, we can see some better numbers over the weekends as well and finish strong,” he said. “It looks that way. The long-term forecast looks, looks promising.”
The week of February break, when kids and university students are out of school, is one of the busiest weeks for Table Mountain Regional Park. (Table Mountain website)
Table Mountain echoes Mission Ridge
Lawrence Blouin, general manager at Table Mountain Regional Park, says the ski hill near North Battleford faced similar challenges during the winter freeze.
“It hit us pretty hard,” he said. “We were closed a number of days last week and we had a bunch of school cancellations.”
The week of February break, when kids and university students are out of school, is one of the busiest weeks for the park. Blouin compares the week to the Christmas rush.
The park is hoping to have a great weekend.
“We’re staffed right up and have lots of lessons,” Blouin said. “We’re looking forward to getting a bunch of people to this place.”
He hopes for a strong finish to the season as well.
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