Fresh snow this morning...hang in there!

We made some snow in the early morning hours and until about 9am.  Most of the snow we made was on the 7 runs that are already open and we started on the magic carpet learning area.  It was cold and dry this morning so if you come down tonight you should be able to instantly tell.   The snow quality will improve with just that 5 hours of fresh snow this morning.  I am skiing tonight for sure, the snow looks great right now.  Heading into this weekend, we will have the same amount of runs open, same lifts, same hours, same rates.  The weather pattern appears to make a huge shift mid next week.  We are ready to make a lot more snow and open up more of Welch Village for all of us!

Great night of snowmaking

We probably had our best night of snow making of the season so far last night and the guns were still going strong until about 11am this morning.  I took a hike up Lookout, down Long Way Home & Paul's Trail, and down the terrain park/Heidi's Hollow areas.   We have at least one more night, maybe two of snow making before Thanksgiving.  More updates coming this week.  We should be able to tell you how much will be open and how many lifts will be spinning by late Wednesday.
Hey guess what....Welch will be open this week!

Monday morning update - 11/13/17

Snow guns are still going strong at the time of this post (about 9am).  The piles are getting bigger, a lot bigger.  I took just a few photos from out in front of the main chalet and towards the terrain park area.  No snowmaking for the next few days as a warm front settles in.  We are keeping our eye on Friday's weather especially the chance for a decent amount of rain.  The rain on on Friday will determine whether we choose to open this coming weekend or not.  Long story short, we don't want compromise a opening with great conditions on Thanksgiving weekend.  We won't know if we are going to open this weekend until probably Friday. We will continue to give you updates throughout the week.  Either way, Thanksgiving weekend is shaping up to be an awesome skiing & riding weekend this year.  Our view is this....anytime we are able to ski in MN before Thanksgiving is a bonus.  Our crew is working hard to get Welch Village open as soon as possible.

Welch is white

Kudos to our snowmaking crew who has been working hard around the clock the past few days.  They were able to turn Welch Village white by Nov. 10th this year.  We had to shut down snowmaking late afternoon today due to the clouds (=humidity), the rising temps, and the east winds.  Still too early to tell how much progress was made towards a possible opening.  But there are a lot of big piles of snow out there.  I plan to take a hike tomorrow and check it all out.

Congrats to the ski areas to our north who have opened for the season.  Our time is coming soon, don't worry.  When we open, it will be worth the short wait.

Don't forget...Day 2 of our Job Fair is this Saturday noon-3pm.  We are hiring in all departments.  I may be a little biased, but you won't find a more exciting and rewarding winter job than working for a  Midwest Ski Area!

Snowmaking Update Nov. 8th

Considering it's only the 8th of November, we had a good night of snowmaking last night. As of 9am this morning, the guns are still on.  Forecast calls for clouds most of the night tonight which may delay things a bit, but we will make snow again tonight.  And from the looks of the forecast, the guns may stay on through Thursday and into Friday sometime.  On Friday, the winds switch back from the east.

Let's be real here.  It's only Nov. 8th.  I/we are well aware that a couple other ski areas "opened" a couple of weeks ago and another ski area or two might "open" this weekend.  Welch Village will not be opening this weekend.  It's our philosophy to wait and open for skiing & riding when we know we can offer you a good experience.  We are concentrating our efforts right now on Lookout, Long Way Home,  Harley's Hollow, the Terrain Park and couple other areas.  When we open, we plan to offer you a great skiing experience if possible.

With the warmer temperatures and chance of rain in the forecast this weekend and next week, we are choosing to leave our large piles of snow alone.  Once the snowcats blade those piles out, we are much more at risk of losing the snow we would have made this week when the temps rise and if it rains.

After Friday morning, we don't see much snowmaking weather next week.  This is our chance this week!  We are going to make as much snow as possible this week and then turn our eyes towards a week from this weekend.  These pics were taken this morning.

Here we go!

We started up the snow guns around 11pm and the guns are still on as I am writing this at 9:30am.  New are pretty happy to start snowmaking technically on Nov. 5th. That's weeks ahead of last year.  That might even be about a month ahead of last year.  If the current forecast for this week holds true we still have a few days of snowmaking in the near future.  Next week it's supposed to warm up again so our crew is hitting it hard this week.  We are finding more leaks in our pipes but that's common.  Better to find them now then in December.  Too early to talk opening day...we might have a better idea later this week.  Stay tuned!

My girls are off of school today for a teacher in-service day.  So they get to come to work with Dad.  Life is good!

We are ready

We are targeting tomorrow night (Sunday, 11/5) to start snowmaking if the current forecast holds true and we get some temps in the 20's.  I am hoping we can start some guns around 8pm.  If the skies are clear all night, that would really make a big difference in the amount of snow we can make.  The recent cold weather has hopefully cooled the water temps in the river which would also help a lot.  The forecast this week looks really good right now.  Hopefully, we can make snow several nights this week!  Have your phone, tablet etc handy tomorrow night just in case you get an alert from Welch Village live on Facebook.