CANCELLED: Sleeping Giant New Year’s Eve Party

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. Given the miserable skiing weather for the last month, we wanted to give you an update on the current situation on the mountain.

We have had our pumps in the river ready to blow snow for the bulk of December, however the warm night-time temperatures (often due heat inversions) have only given us a couple of nights where we could have made snow. Last Friday we felt we were close to being able to open Bighorn if we could get a little help from our snow crew this week as we saw temperatures would be favorable; however, after preparing to go hard through the weekend and this week, we got a leak in one of our main lines providing water to the snow making system. This prevented us from making snow. Our outdoor team is working on solutions to solve this problem, but currently our snow making capabilities are offline.

The SG snow making system is older and had several issues that haven’t allowed it to fully function – even before 2020. We were able to do something of a ‘ranch fix’ on the system in 2020, that allowed the system to operate for a week or two, however it was extremely inefficient and costly. Following that experience in the summer of 2021 we hired the Italian company Techno Alpine to do analysis of our system and propose how we could set up a small but turnkey automated system that would allow us to get coverage to the lower parts of the mountain especially the Bighorn side. Based on their recommendation we spent around $100k buying two new fan guns, several replacement wands and a couple of large pumps that would allow the system to support the new guns. We ran this system with some success in the winter of 2021, but one of the key problems that remained was the aging piping network for water on the mountain, which was prone to blowouts and other failures. We looked at doing some upgrades there this summer but, in the end, decided to focus on trail expansion and the tubing park. I would make the same decision again given the chance. We had to expand and develop the mountain, but obviously the failure of the system this week has put us in a tough spot.

It looks unlikely given the current weather report that we will be able to open on December 30th, but we do see positive weather trends coming our direction after the new year and are hopeful we will be able to open soon. Staff have tried doing some skiing and riding on the back side of the Headwall heading down towards the bunny hill, while the snow is not great, it is close to skiable, and getting a foot of snow on the bunny hill would probably solve most of our problems. On the Sheepeater side we have better coverage up high, but the mid to lower part of the mountain is going to need more snow. Sadly, the tubing park which we’d hoped would be an early and late season workhorse for us (allowing us to open earlier and operate later) definitely needs more snow to be safely operated.

We understand and share your frustrations with the weather this season. This is not a situation where we have been sitting on our hands. I would like to thank SG staff for their hard work the last 2-3 months to get ready for the winter, by far this was one of our best seasons ever in terms of preparation, so this weather has been a real gut-punch. Specifically, I’d like to thank our outdoor crew. They have been working double shifts to do what they could and had planned to work through Christmas to get the mountain open. I have been blown away by their effort. The plan they came up with for this week to get things open was theirs and required a lot of sacrifice and creative problem solving. The whole SG management team really did a great job in terms of facing this adversity and working together to get through it. Despite the situation, it has been heartening to see this team come together. I had planned to write a letter praising them for getting the mountain open in an unprecedented tough-weather year. Sadly however, this situation is not one we can quickly solve by writing a check or putting in more hours.

Going forward to do a better job of keeping you up to date on where we are, the SG Outdoor Operations team will begin giving regular video updates from the mountain starting this week – and hopefully be able to at least provide a more concrete opening date by the end of next week – when the next wave of weather is expected to come through and we will know more about status of the snowmaking system. In the absolute worst-case scenario where we don’t see a clear path to getting the mountain open soon, we will be preparing to provide season pass holders with refunds.

We thank you for your patience. We are doing all we can to get the mountain safely open as soon as we can.

Nick & The Sleeping Giant Team