The escalated quickly

As I type this on Tuesday afternoon, I am watching the snow whales grow & grow in size.  And as I type this, our crew, who has been already working around the clock since snowmaking temps arrived, are starting to turn some guns off and begin pushing huge piles of snow around.  This takes time.  I know all of you are excited for us to open more runs, but this takes time...especially when the temps drop, the air dries, and we make this much snow. We will have more information soon but as of now, I would anticipate adding a run like Nanny's Knob this Thursday as well as much wider versions of Sweeny/Jon Jon, Fowl Play, and Paula's Party (new large beginner ballroom hill).  By Friday at noon, we are hoping to have Lookout and Wild Finale open as well as possibly Long Way Home & Paul's Trail.  There should be more terrain & lifts coming by Saturday am, but again...this process is slow and we are working as hard as we can.  Park features will be accessed by chairlift for one more week as blast a season's worth of park snow in the new park area. Weather and temps can change quickly so we want to stack up as much snow as possible during this cold snap that we have been blessed with. This should be an awesome December. 

Annual Reminder:  Please.  Please obey all markings, closure ropes, Closed signs, and Caution signs.  Please respect safety and our policies at Welch Village.  There will not be warnings if you are skiing/riding in closed areas.  You will be taking this season off at Welch Village and maybe more seasons.  Thank you for being smart and respectful.  

Happy Thanksgiving Snowmaking Update 2025

Happy Thanksgiving from our family & entire WV team to you! 

I just did a walking tour of our snowmaking operations and things are starting to change in the Village, in a good way.  There are challenges every year during early season snowmaking operations.  The river water is warm because of the warm fall weather.  There are leaks in the snowmaking pipes that slow things down.  And we sometimes blow electric transformers like we did last night.  Huge shoutout to the crew from Dakota Electric who locked in and installed a new one last night for us. 

With our new chairlift, we decided to modify our opening weekend snowmaking push a bit.  We are also able to adjust to this new strategy because of our investment in tower guns over the past few seasons and adding water capacity with a new pump.  We decided to use the majority of our 33 portable guns on the areas we want to open first.  These are additional guns to the many tower guns that are already on these slopes.  Runs like Lookout, Wild Finale, Sweeny, Fowl Play, Paula's Party/Heidi's Hollow (new beginner slope area) are getting absolutely buried right now!  We also have all tower guns going as well on key areas like Harley's Hollow, Dan's Dive, Bakkelyka and more. 

As always, are goal is to open for you with as quality of a skiing & riding experience as possible.  And yes, we will allow our valued season passholders first chance to hit the slopes first on opening day.  An opening day that will likely feature THREE quad chairlifts (at least)!  

Stay tuned as we will have an opening update sometime tomorrow or early Saturday.  The next 7-10 days look very cold and we are thankful for this cold snap and the exciting snowmaking ahead. 

We are also thankful for all of our employees and for all of you that make this place so special.  Again, Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours and it might be a good idea to start getting your gear ready, opening day is not far away.