Mont du Lac now open, despite recent warmer weather

With the above-average temperatures we have been having this fall and now winter, maintaining ski resorts has been more difficult.

Mont du Lac was able to open in October last year. This season, the resort was not able to welcome guests until last week.

“All of our inside staff, outside operations, everybody is just really proud of the fact that we can open as soon as we’re able to,” said Director of Revenue Bridgette Duffy. “Luckily, we were able to open on Thanksgiving day. We were open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Our maintenance crew has been working so hard. Despite the warmer temperatures kind of going back and forth, warm and cold, they were able to get the snow on the hill, which was amazing. and then, we did close down this week.

Mont du Lac is now open for the season. Temperatures are dropping soon, so making snow will be much easier.

“Those mid twenties are perfect for us, we have to work with the humidity as well as that temperature,” Duffy explained. “Luckily, we already have a great base down at the hill, so we’re looking at that frozen ground.It’s a little icy, but the snow’s looking good, so as long as we have those colder temperatures and the frozen ground then we can continue to just make snow.”

Before temperatures cool, only a few hills are open for the time being.

“We have our main run, which is called main, and then our pancake beginner’s hill, and then on our tubing hill, we have what’s called mSnow technology, so we have tubing in the summer and the winter,” said Duffy. “We have blow-up bumpers and plastic lanes that you can tube down, so we do have four of those lanes open. We are technically open for tubing, we just don’t have those snow tube lanes open quite yet.”

Mont du Lac hopes to open the rest of the resort soon. As long as the cooler air stays, they will stay open. Full hours can be found on their website.

“We plan as much as we can, but it’s really all weather-dependent,” said Duffy. “If we have snow and cold weather, we’re gonna be open as many days as we can, but if there are warmer temperatures and it just doesn’t work for us to be open, we can’t blow snow, then we are going to close it down.”

Up-to-date ski slope conditions throughout the Northland can be found here.