Dale Boyd
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
South Okanagan skiers and snowboarders can soon hit the slopes on Baldy Mountain, aiming to open up Dec. 19, as staff finish final preparations for a truly unique season.
Outside of casual improvements and training staff, Baldy Mountain Resort, has undertaken extra preparations and precautions as many businesses have to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“We’ve had to do some changes to our operations certainly for COVID. The same things everybody else is doing, shields for the cashiers and whatnot,” said Caroline Sherrer, operations manager at Baldy. “We’ve added an outdoor barbecue which we will be doing daily, so people can be outside and order their lunch.”
The Eagle Chair got a new rope, electrical drive and motor in the off-season, and Baldy will have RFID wireless tickets and gates for the first time this year along with online passes.
The mountain resort is placing more emphasis on the “grab-and-go” menu for food, keeping skiers from congregating and staying in indoor areas with outdoor heaters under the patio — and ticket sales are taking place at an outdoor kiosk to minimize indoor activities.
“We will be asking people to wear a face covering while they’re in the lift lines and obviously we will be following all provincial standards as they apply to indoor spaces. So masks required indoors, but again we are trying to point people in the direction of grabbing their food and eating,” Sherrer said. “We’re asking people to eat in their cars, we’re making a lot of different ramps to access the parking lot easier, so people can access their vehicles easier.”
The Baldy parking lot will also feature special parking for school buses so kids and can eat and warm up as needed safely.
“We are quite excited to get rolling. We feel we’ve wrapped our arms around what we need to for progressing with COVID. We are also aware that we need to pivot quickly when necessary,” Sherrer said.
Staff are rearing to go for opening day at the mountain.
“We’ve got a lot of young, ski-area professionals. We’ve been very lucky with our core staff I feel they want to be in the industry and so it’s always great to mentor young people that are excited about being in the ski business and putting all their ideas into play,” Sherrer said.
The mountain had 60 centimetres of snow at the top of Eagle Chair Friday, and Sherrer was looking to get 10 to 15 more centimetres by opening day. There is some precipitation in the forecast on Friday and Saturday — less than one centimetre on Friday and 10 to 15 millimetres Saturday.
“We are expecting some storm cycles to come through here in the next few days starting with Friday evening. Sugarlump side is definitely looking really good, we’ve filled in all the ditches, it’s looking great. The Eagle side terrain is definitely a bit trickier, it’s a bit rockier, so we’re going to have to assess that after these storm cycles,” Sherrer said.
“We should be good to go with (the) Sugarlump (Chair) at the very least on the 19th.”
