'It's uplifting for us': Marmot Basin, Rabbit Hill, Snow Valley kick off new ski season

Many local ski hills have opened for the winter season after the province experienced large amounts of snow and cooler temperatures earlier this week.

Ski hills including Marmot Basin in Jasper and Rabbit Hill have opened their doors for the 2024-25 skiing season, with Snow Valley opening up on Saturday.

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Brian Rode, the vice president of Marmot Basin, spoke with CTV News Edmonton on Friday about welcoming guests back to the hill after the town's summer wildfires.

"Obviously a major challenge here this summer and this fall," said Rode. "We're so happy that we're (fully) open for this season."

Rode said the ski hill is opening in stages which is "typical of the early season" and that all but one of the lifts are fully operational.

One of the challenges staff faced was having less time to maintain the hill before opening.

"We shut down for quite a period of time during the summer where we do our regular maintenance, so we had to compress that into the fall," Rode said.

"This fall was unseasonably warm, so that set us back about 10 days on our snow making but now that it's cooled off, we've been making a lot of snow. We have most of our runs in the lower mountain open as well as the upper mountain," he added.

Expert skiers are in for a treat as the hill installed a knob chair ski-lift last year.

According to Rode, it goes up an extra 330 feet higher than the last chair lift. With a little more snow, the knob chair will be available to anyone wanting a challenge.

Despite the delays caused by a warm season and the wildfires, Rode said "it's a relief" to open the hill.

"It's uplifting for us to know that we can operate the ski area … The good news (is) that a lot of the infrastructure did survive. Most of the hotels, the restaurants, the taverns, the retail shops are mainly intact," Rode said, adding the wildfires burned down more than 350 homes.

Staff at Snow Valley and Rabbit Hill are excited for what they're calling "perfect conditions" for a ski season opening.

"We've been snow making since mid October, but it's really been in the last 12 to 14 days where we've been able to make snow continuously for 24 hours a day," said Derek Look, Rabbit Hill's co-owner. "We're going to have lots of events going on this year because it is our anniversary for the 70th year."

"We were able to get all the snow made and all the grooming done, and snow pushed so we're ready to go. We're stoked to open officially this Saturday,' said Tim Dea, the marketing communications manager at Snow Valley Ski Club.

The Marmot Basin vice president said attendance so far has been "OK" since opening on Nov. 22, but he's hopeful more people will come.

"It's not quite on par with what we would see (in) a very busy year. I think some people are still hesitant. They're unsure about whether or not they should visit Jasper," Rode said.

"It's going to pick up now that people know that we have most of our runs open … I expect the attendance to pick up pretty quickly here as we head towards Christmas," he said.

Marmot Basin and Rabbit Hill are open for the season and Snow Valley is set to kick off their season on Saturday.