No not that. I always ask folks if they know the difference between a snow cone and a soft-serve ice cream cone. Of course, the answer is Monarch Mountain’s snow is the soft-serve ice cream cone. There is something to skiing all-natural powder or even groomed natural snow that feels so much more forgiving. It’s a lot quieter too without the gigantic snow guns blasting away. Some may say that we could open sooner or stay open longer, if we made snow, but we prefer not to. It can be an exercise in patience, much like the old Heinz Ketchup commercials with Carly Simon singing “Anticipation” in the background. Generally, we open well before Christmas.
It wasn’t until the 1969/70 season when we began tallying opening day dates and conditions. There have been 48 seasons since then. We opened 38 times in November and 9 times in December. Our earliest opening date was the 1969 season on October 26. Our next earliest was last season on November 1. Our latest opening in all these years was December 15. In all, we have missed opening before or on Thanksgiving Day only 13 times, with the average November opening day being the 19th. Three of those days we opened on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Not so bad considering we bank on nothing except Mother Nature.
So here we sit in early November with very little snow on the ground and I’m not worried in the slightest because we have been through this anticipation period many many times. There’s always a storm brewing, maybe even this weekend. This year though, when opening day is announced, I might just pass out with the anticipation being so great. So there’s that … and Carly Simon singing in the background.
