There’s lots of snow up at Mount Baldy now as visitors found out when they drove up Saturday for Baldy Festival of Colours. Many visitors rode the quad lift up Sugar Lump for a gorgeous view of snow on the trees and the yellow larches at lower elevations. (Richard McGuire photo)
Visitors to Mount Baldy’s Festival of Colours on the weekend were treated to lots of snow on the ground, along with hospitality.
“We call it the Festival of Colours, and we thought it was actually going to be fall colours,” said Joey O’Brien, managing director of Mount Baldy Resort. “It seems that the predominant colour is white.”
The festival ran over two weekends and concluded Sunday. Guests had a chance to ride a chairlift up the Sugar Lump, eat sausages and burgers at the day lodge, and sample local beer, wine and custom-roasted coffee.
There was also a chance to learn about the South Okanagan Rehab Centre for Owls (SORCO) and the famous great horned education owl Houdini put in several appearances.
O’Brien said there was heavy snow on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week. Although much of that snow melted, there was another dusting before Saturday’s events.
O’Brien estimated Saturday that about 20 centimetres of snow remained at the base, but he said he measured 35 cm at the top with a firm crust.
“I skied off the mountain today (Saturday) with our team,” he said. “It was beautiful up there. It was sweet skiing.”
The mountain is officially scheduled to open Dec. 1, provided there is sufficient snow, but barring a heat wave, that looks like a given. O’Brien is now musing about the possibility of opening some weekends as early as November.
He said 75 cm of snow base is needed, though the resort will soon be setting up more snow fences to try to capture enough snow.
“Give me that 75 cm and I’m going to pounce on it,” said O’Brien. “It may not even be the whole mountain, but just some of the mountain. Who cares?”
Mount Baldy closed after the 2012-13 season when its American owners ran into financial difficulties. It opened again briefly in early 2015 under another potential buyer, but that deal fell through when the buyer couldn’t raise the capital.
Now O’Brien has the backing of a group of Chinese-Canadian investors led by Vancouver lawyer Victor Tsao, who are prepared to let O’Brien turn the resort around over the longer haul. Baldy will be the third ski resort O’Brien has rescued.
But for a number of years, Baldy was neglected with only minimal maintenance. That’s meant work crews have been busy throughout the summer and fall getting equipment running
and certified and getting facilities into shape.
“You see those bushes over there?” O’Brien asks, pointing across the muddy parking lot to a clump of tall shrubs. “That’s what everything looked like.”
One of the big challenges was to clear away vegetation that grew unchecked for years and covered the mountain.
“We’ve given it a haircut,” said O’Brien. “That’s 500 acres of haircut. That’s a team of six for seven weeks over the mountain.”
They also went into the woods to knock down branches that O’Brien referred to as “knee breakers.”
Heavy equipment is standing by to expand the parking lot and portable buildings will be coming in as a temporary measure until new permanent structures can be built.
O’Brien shows a recently installed energy-efficient wood burner that he hopes will provide all the heat for the day lodge, and he points to an upper porch he plans to enclose.
Soon more than $120,000 in ski and snowboard rental equipment will be arriving.
Many of the guests were buying seasons passes, or they’ve already got them. Some were getting their pass photos taken.
O’Brien says passes have been selling briskly with about one third of the 5,000 passes sold.
“We’re right on target,” he said. “We’ve got what we want to have. It’s all going to happen.”
Dozens of guests at a time rode the quad lift up Sugar Lump for gorgeous views of the snow on the ground and clinging to the trees. At the top, guests stood in two-foot-deep snow, looking out over clumps of yellow larches in the valleys far below.
Children play in the snow at the top. A father warns his daughter to put her mitts on so her hands don’t freeze. A three-year-old boy starts making a snowman, but decides to knock it over instead.
One man sees all the snow and regrets not bringing up his snowboard. He decides to go down and get it so he can be the first snowboarder of the season.
Down below, in the day lodge, O’Brien is busy chatting with guests.
“We’re going to be just fine,” he said. “We’ve got everything done that we need to get done. We’ve gone from the ‘must do’s’ to ‘should do’s’ and maybe even we’ll get to the ‘nice to do’s’ this year. It won’t be a completely polished ski resort. There are big pieces missing, like child care. The building limits us in a certain way. But for the most part, we’re going to have a fully functioning ski resort seven days a week.”
By Richard McGuire
Joey O’Brien (right), managing director of Baldy Mountain Resort, and Rayana Pedlar, operator of the quad lift, welcomed visitors to the resort on Saturday. Many visitors came by Saturday and Sunday for Baldy Festival of Colours, but the predominent colour this past weekend was white. (Richard McGuire photo)
