“Last year we had sold out days, much throughout the whole year. Lots of interest. Lots of people looking to get outside.”
Ski hill lovers and first timers can circle their calendar, as the local ski hill just southwest of the Border City will open the ski lift on January 8th.
Now in it’s 56th year, Chris Bogue president of the Mount Joy Ski Club says they are going to follow the same restriction exemption program as they did last season.
“That means you can show up to the hill. You don’t have to have vaccinations, but we do ask that people in the buildings wear masks and socially distance themselves. We’re doing the same thing that we did last year with our rental shop, that you have to have a rental time booking to pick up your rentals.”
Bogue says that system worked well off their website last year with online sales of day passes.
He says they are going to sell 125 day passes for each day of the season, which usually runs until March. He adds they are almost sold out of the season passes with less than 50 remaining.
The non-profit club, which is run by volunteers embraces community involvement, and Bogue says they had a student help design the graphics for their passes, which have been printed again by Insight Occupational Testing.
“We had a student from Rendell Park School actually do a drawing for us and that’s what we used for our graphics for our passes this year. You know the community involvement is something that I hold pretty near and dear to my heart. The same for the rest of our board members. We feel that being a community place, it’s very community-minded to have other people involved.”
“So it’s not as steep anymore. It’s laid right back. It’s a bunny hill that you would find in a very well organized and designed ski area. So new people to the sport can come out and have confidence getting to the top of our bunny hill, coupled with our very great team of instructors.”
The club is thankful to Precision Contracting, First and Foremost and RM of Wilton for their help towards the new bunny hill.
The club will be open again on the weekends from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Bogue says they continue to look for volunteers even to manage the snow maker. They typically make snow on days when the temperature is minus 15 or cooler.
“We have two SMI Super PoleCats. They are state of the art machines. Very very good. They do about 100 gallons a minute.”
Bogue says this helps to make good, quality snow. Still, they would definitely welcome more volunteers, which might even allow them to open for a day during the week.