Marble Mountain blames weather for delayed opening

Marble Mountain is blamingpoor weather conditions for the delayed opening of the resortfor skiing and snowboarding this season.

Chris Beckett, the general manager for the Steady Brook resort, said not much natural snow as fallen, and conditions have not been good for making snow.He said the decision to delay the opening was a hard one to make.

"It was a bit disheartening for us," he said.

"But we had to make the call because we didn't have enough snow coverage."

• Sloppy, stormy weather hits much of Newfoundland

Beckett said they had to make the decision to postpone the opening so that they could focus on making more snow.

"We've got a lot down on our trails where we need it," he said.

"We've been focusing out snow making efforts on the lower part of the mountain because we can get more trails open and give more variety to our guests."

Ideal conditions needed

Beckett said in order to produce man-made snow, they need certain conditions such as temperature, wind and humidity to be just right.

"The relative humidity, for example, needs to be ideally 70 per cent or less.Last week,we were seeing high 80s," he said.

"You don't make a lot of snow in that relative humidityyou just produce a lot of water."

Beckett said the resort haslost a number ofdaysrecently, due to wind and mild weather, but that some natural snowfell on Sunday which should somewhat compensate for the loss.

"The best news we have is that mother nature gave us some natural snow overnight, so that's fantastic," he said.

"This is my fifth year now and this is probably the leanest amount of natural snow I've seenus start with in that five year period."

Lightening Express

Poor weather conditions aren't the only setback for Marble Mountain this season. InAugust,themain chair lift was destroyed by fire following a lightning strike.

• Marble Mountain Ski Resort chair lift damaged after lightning strike

Beckett said the process of getting the new lift up and running is proceeding as scheduled.

"It's coming along great, over the week the lift manufacturers team was driving the majority of the parts up the mountain," he said.

"While they're putting up the cable we expect to see the chairs show up."

The new lift will have 100 chairs, and they won't take long to attach, according to Beckett.

In the meantime, the resort will continue to work on producing enough snow so that they can open the lower parts of the hill by Friday or Saturday.

"We're going to wait and see what happens over the next couple of days," he said.

"Then we'll be able to, come late Tuesday, early Wednesday, have a better idea of where we're standing to open."