Great Divide co-owner Travis Crawford is excited to have the slopes back open on Mount Belmont. Over the past couple of weeks, the hill has gone from green to white, and skiers and boarders have returned.
“We’re just excited to have winter here, excited to see our friends back, and excited for snow to keep falling,” Crawford said.
During the off-season, ownership was hard at work on various projects and programs to improve the mountain for this upcoming season.
One of these includes a new mountain host program, where folks can tag along with a host at the bottom of the lifts and get a proper tour of the 1500 acres, exploring new terrain they might not know about.
“The vast majority of our traffic comes straight down the center of the mountain, and we want people to realize that there's an entire expansive south area, and out on that north face, there's a whole, basically a different mountain,” Crawford said.
Another new feature is a heated patio by the main lodge, helping them melt snow and ice right off and keeping people warm in between runs.
They’re also expanding their winter kids camp and added an additional snow groomer to improve run quality.
After improvements and changes during the off-season, they’ve already seen a good turnout to the start of the year.
More than 300 people headed up the mountain for their opening on November 30th. that doubled this past weekend.
“Our goal of getting open early is really just to get the snow back under your feet and get a feeling and start building that community back up,” Crawford said.
This year was one of their later starts due to the warmer fall, but the cold weather at the end of November helped.
“It allowed us to get open in November, which is always a good thing,” Crawford said. We work very hard to be open as early as possible, so to have a chairlift spinning in November was fantastic.”
Right now, they’re open on weekends, but once school gets out for the holiday break, they’ll open on weekdays too.
“It’s just a really tight-knit community, so it's great to have everyone back up, and see everyone again and start having a great year,” Crawford said.
They’ll keep making snow to open more runs, but they’re hopeful for some more help from Mother Nature in the coming weeks.
