RED LODGE — Red Lodge Mountain opened up after a week's delay welcoming over 1,000 skiers and boarders on Saturday.
Learn more about their snow making efforts:
Normally, the season starts around Thanksgiving, but due to unseasonably warm temperatures before then, opening day was moved to Dec. 5.
"We've been coming up here and it's great. For the second day it's open, it's really good considering how it was last year," said Christopher Copper, driving up from Wyoming.
"It's opening weekend. I feel like you really just have to come up. We're like part of the community up here," said Erik Sundstrom, who regularly comes from Billings to snowboard.
Those from the mountain say their snow base is now ten to 15 inches at opening weekend. It's in part thanks to mother nature but also snow guns.
Director of Mountain Operations, Joe Germann, said it was worth the week's wait to get there.
"That allowed us to have some more available terrain and allow the snow piles to kind of leech out. And when we go to push those snow piles out, the snow consistency is much better," Germann said.
He adds last week's cold snap has helped the snow stack up.
Over that week, water has been pumped down from their pond on Grizzly Peak to make snow on the slopes.
"If we have cold temperatures between zero and ten degrees, which is ideal, we can go, and basically in six to eight hours, make a pile that's eight to ten feet deep," said Germann.
With Montana in a La Nina year, snowfall is expected to trend higher with temperatures staying lower, which is good news for Red Lodge Mountain. In the short term, forecasted warmer temperatures may hinder snow making efforts into the next week.
Regardless, Germann is confident the seven runs that have been opened will remain that way through the week and season.
"Between the warm temps and the wind that we're going to anticipate, it's definitely going to have an impact on our snow making efforts. But all in all as long as the temps drop and we're anywhere between zero or 20 to 25 degrees, our projection is real good," Germann said.
With over twenty snow guns, Red Lodge Mountain boasts the second largest snow making operation in Montana. Ten more guns were recently added to their arsenal, and Germann said they'll be up and running soon to bolster efforts.
"We have new snow guns. So, we bought them used from Homewood out in California and we're not currently using those at the time because we have to modify the plugs on them so that they can tie into our electrical system. But once we get those plugs swapped over, then we'll add them to the fleet and place them where we need them," said Germann.
