Megan Waque and her two girls Natalie and Sadie took advantage of the opening of the beginner hill at Laurentian Ski Hill Saturday, to get out their snowboards and enjoy the day.
“We’re excited. It is a beautiful day, and we’re glad to be able to get our and enjoy the start of the season,” said Waque.
“This is our second year being members. We enjoy being able to ski after work and school, and coming on the weekends. Having it in town is nice. It is easy access for a great hill in the city.”
This is the first time snowboarding for the girls, who normally ski.
“I think it might be easy. You might not end up doing the splits,” said eight year old Natalie as she prepared for her first run down the hill.
Older sister Sadie likes the idea of snowboarding with her parents.
“I think it will be fun, and I want to try something new, because both of my parents snowboard. I’m planning on snowboarding the whole winter,” said the 10-year -old.
Five-year-old Olivier Argo already has a few years of skiing under his belt, and this is the second season for younger brother, three year old Mathieu.
“The temperature is great, the snow is great. The only thing the kids are looking forward to is getting on the big hill,” laughed dad Chris.
Skiing is something they enjoy doing together.
“In fact we’ve signed up for a season pass with my wife, so we’re trying to get out here whenever we can on days off and on weekends. It’s so close to everything. It’s about seven minutes from our house. So, it could be a snowy day at home, we’re bored, we get our skis and we come to the slopes which is nice.”
This is the second season of skiing for three and a half year old Elise Bruneau and fourth season for her six year old brother.
“It’s beautiful today. It is nice to be outside, getting some fresh air. We’re just happy to be on snow again. It is something we can do as a family, which is really great,” said mom Alyson.
Ski hill manager Cam Graham says the start up date for the season is pretty much on par.
“The biggest challenge has been making snow. We have more natural snow this year, we just haven’t had the cold temperatures to make snow like we’d like to. We’re still working on the main runs, but right now the beginner hill is open, and it’s been very popular, with lots of kids on it,” said Graham, who is hoping to open the main hill on Saturday, December 22nd.
“We were trying as best we could to make it for Sunday, but we’re going to go for the 22nd there’s just not quite enough snow. So that’s next Saturday and Sunday, and Monday we’ll be open and we shut down for Christmas Day and then we go right through. Even when we open, we’ll still only have half the hill. I think we have about a 36 hour window where we an make snow before the 22nd . We’ll finish off Slingshot and we’ve already started moving most of the guns over to Maples and we’ll start there.”
Crews have been working on a few changes to the hill.
“We’ve expanded Omischl and we hope to get our mogul run off to the side more than down the middle like it was last year, and Omischl should be much more accessible. This is going to be a snowmaking issue, but we we’re trying to get lower Jacks back open. Last year we had the Glade but you couldn’t get at it because of the work on Omischl, but this year you’ll be able to get access to the Glade, which is on the right hand side of Omischl when you’re looking up the hill.”
Updates and announcements will be posted on the Laurentian Ski HIll website and on Facebook.
