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Snow Ridge News

Line Traveling Circus at Snow Ridge!September 3, 2024Happy September all! That familiar early morning chill is in the air and we’ve officially kicked off our winter prep season. With that in mind, we figured everyone could use a little stoke to help fan the winter flames a bit! Last February, we were fortunate enough to host the fellas from Line Traveling Circus for a few days of tomfoolery on the slopes. Now 17 seasons deep, TC has filmed in hundreds of locations all over the world. I know Will and Andy from our younger days of traveling and skiing around the northeast and we went on to work together at Windells for a couple memorable summers at Mount Hood. It had been about 10 years, however, since we’d linked up last and it was awesome to see them again! Shane and Erik were familiar with the Ridge, with Erik stacking some shots here with Meathead Films (Now Ski The East) back in the day! Jake was another familiar face from my time at Windells, and meeting Kevin, Bennie and Mitchell was a real honor. These guys are all incredible skiers/filmmakers and it was fun to watch them do what they do best! Enough from me though, check out the video yourself and watch the guys get wild all over the mountain! Nick Line Traveling Circus – 17.1 Weather or Not [...] Read more...

Summer FocusJune 14, 2024Hello friends! Traditionally summer is a time when we take a bit of a step back from our busy, winter schedules and you may not hear as much from us. This summer, I’m hoping to change that! To be completely frank, we’ve been fielding a staggering number of questions about the future of Snow Ridge. I want to come right out and say, Snow Ridge isn’t going anywhere, and neither is my family. After what can easily be described as our most challenging year yet, we have weathered the literal and figurative storm, and we are more motivated than ever. Not only to keep the business open, but to continue expanding and building upon our vision for Snow Ridge. We have a lot going on behind the scenes this summer, and I’d love to share some of that with you so you know what’s happening around the resort. First off, we’re currently working on clearing, expanding and re-building our festival grounds that were severely damaged in the tornado. The new festival area will be ready for our next event, Goonfest, coming up the final weekend of June! Check out all the info here! We are currently in the financing stage of a renovation project for our main lodge, The Wax House. With any luck, we’ll stay on track to have a new HVAC system, ceiling, walls, doors, and fixtures done by this coming winter season. This will not only improve the experience for our skiers and snowboarders, but will also make for an enhanced event space in the summer months. On a more long term note, we have committed to expanding and streamlining our snowmaking system. With winters on the tug hill becoming less and less predictable, improved snowmaking is a must. This will include doubling our water capacity from 500 to 1000 gallons per minute as well as doubling the total number of snow guns in our arsenal. Water and electric lines will also be run to Little Mountain, in order to bring snowmaking to the beginner/intermediate area for the first time ever. We have already begun this journey with our friends at TechnoAlpin, who have created a master plan for us to begin implementing over the next few seasons. If you’ve driven by recently, you may have noticed some new things around the Ridge. The Ridge Runner Disc Golf Course is now fully re-opened with a few new hole designs on Snowy Meadow and Little Mountain. As always, the course is free to play anytime. Jackie has also been busy expanding our little funny farm! We now have our two mini goats, Teeny and Tiny. Four ducks, Peanut, Pickle, Pepper, and Shelly. And our newest resident, Beira the Highland Cow (Beira is the Scottish Queen of Winter). These cuties will be ready for your visit during our Fall Fest events, keep an eye out for more info coming soon! Finally, I am working with an engineer to once and for all get North Chair back online. We will work together to finalize a plan to stabilize the concrete bases of towers 5 and 6, which gave us more issues last winter due to frost heaving. Additionally, we’ll be installing a detection system on both North and Ridge Runner Chair that will tell us exactly where the issue is when a safety switch gets tripped. This will help us remedy issues faster and cut down immensely on down time. Both chairs will also have brand new comm lines, which will help eliminate a number of potential issues as well. We also hope to transition Ridge Runner completely to new galvanized chairs and begin tower painting this summer and fall. In summary, we are staying very busy this off-season and we are very much looking forward to coming back next winter bigger, and better than ever. Until then, have a great summer and we hope to see you soon! Nick Mir GM     [...] Read more...

Season ThoughtsMarch 22, 2024Hey all, hope everyone has been able to get some gardening done this month (jokes, kind of). I just wanted to put out a little statement about this season and wrap up what has easily been our most challenging year to date. First and foremost, we do have some snow coming in tonight and tomorrow (3/22-23). In a normal year, this would be a great way to keep the season going. This year, however, we have lost just about all of our base at this point. The storms earlier in the week didn’t hit us like they were forecast to, leaving us with an inch or two across the mountain. Even if we got 12″ tomorrow, which is unlikely, there wouldn’t be much underneath it. The ground is no longer frozen so grooming is not an option and the top and bottom ramps of Ridge Runner are non-existent. With all these factors in mind, we’ve decided that attempting to open for one more day is not feasible. After Saturday’s Rail Jam on Bunny Bowl, we’ll be calling it a season. It’s no secret that the weather this winter was a pretty big disappointment. In a season when we really needed a strong snow year, we saw our worst one yet. At 125″ to date, this is by far the lowest snow total we’ve seen in the last 9 years. On top of that, mild temps and rain kept us from really taking advantage of the snow that we did get over the long term. However, I am happy with the conditions that we were able to maintain throughout the season. Sliding on snow is fun no matter the weather, and we really did have some epic days thrown into the mix. I hope everyone was able to get out and enjoy some of those deep pow days or bluebird groomers! Next, I’d like to give an update on our tornado recovery and what we have planned for the future. My family’s world got turned upside down last August when that EF3 tornado ripped through our property and damaged 4 lifts, a groomer, buildings, and took down thousands of trees. The future was very uncertain, wondering if we would ever operate again, much less for the ’23-’24 winter season. Soon after, an outpouring of support from across the country started coming in. It gave us the hope and determination we needed to attack the situation and begin moving forward. We set the lofty goal of not only opening this season, but at some point during the season getting back to 100% operational. On February 17th, we accomplished that goal with the re-opening of North Chair. We now have some more work to do on North, but regardless I am incredibly proud of how far we were able to come these last 9 months. There are a couple of people in particular that I’d like to thank by name. Joe Garnsey and Tom Smith, two very good friends of mine and many at Snow Ridge, were absolutely instrumental in our recovery efforts. Without these two, there would not have been a ’23-’24 season. From the bottom of my heart, thank you gentlemen. There are so many other people to thank, I would never be able to name them all in one place. But please know, to those of you who donated to our fundraiser, helped on clean up days, shared words of encouragement, or even just bought lift tickets or season passes this year: Thank you! You are all the reason that we are back on our feet and Snow Ridge will continue to operate for years to come. Finally, as I mentioned, there is still work to do. Hundreds of trees remain down across the mountain and removal of them will undoubtedly take years. The two foundations that shifted on North Chair require more work to ensure their stability in the future. Ridge Runner will receive a brand new communication line and safety circuit this summer, decreasing down time drastically moving forward. And most importantly, we have begun plans for a huge snowmaking upgrade to increase our snowmaking capacity and efficiencies. We are working with our friends at Technoalpin to determine the best path forward to accomplish these goals. With that said, we are not done. There is a lot to do and we look forward to continuing the work as soon as the weather allows. Additionally, we have a full summer of events planned and a renewed focus on how we see summer operations moving forward. Those are conversations for another day, however, so we’ll leave it at that for now. We have one final hoorah tomorrow with the Season Ending Rail Jam on Bunny Bowl. Come watch the riders throw down and enjoy some food and drink on the Tavern patio. The jam will run from 11am-3pm and is only $20 for competitors, free to spectate! Again, thank you to everyone who has stood by us. We are excited for what the future holds for Snow Ridge! Nick Mir General Manager   [...] Read more...

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