The ski season is on pause at Troll Resort in the North Cariboo.
Owner Hildur Sinclair says they ran the bunny hill yesterday (Monday) with lessons and training for the kids, but they are now on hold.
“As I am talking to you it’s raining. Our base is falling apart, the lower part is anyways, so we need to take a pause and we need the temperatures to drop so that firms everything up, and then we need a little bit of snow on top of that and then we’re good to go again.”
Sinclair says they hope that that will happen on Sunday or Monday.
She says the pause is not a surprise.
“We went into the season knowing that El Nino was going to be a tricky one to deal with this year, so we did a lot of summer grooming so that we didn’t need a lot of snow, so we’re not surprised, we’re not shocked by this. Ski resorts plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
Sinclair says other ski hills in BC are dealing with the same thing and she says Troll has battled El Nino and La Nina in the past.
“2000 we had a delayed opening, 2002 we didn’t open until February 4th. All the 50 years that Troll has been running though, we’ve never lost a season.”
Sinclair says they are not worried about the BC Winter Games.
“No we’re not. We still have a good base higher up and with colder temperatures we have enough snow, we’ve got the equipment, we’ve got the team. We’ve gone to plan B. Ideally it would have been lovely to have it showcased lower down the mountain. We’ll push it further up the mountain but the long range forecast, I mean the BC Winter Games are at the end of February, we’re at the beginning right now and looking at the long range forecast it remains colder and there is some snow in the forecast.”
Sinclair says they can work with the base that they have up there.
