Laurentian Ski Hill trying to get an edge on Mother Nature

Duncan Cornthwaite says it has been a challenge this season to get Laurentian Ski Hill going due to the inconsistent weather the area has seen in both December and January.  

"Mother Nature has been cruel to the people who enjoy the outdoors, especially last year," noted Cornthwaite, the executive director of the Laurentian Ski Hill Snowboarding Club. 

"We actually stopped making snow on Christmas Eve just due to weather and we brought it back up in January. It allowed us to at least open our beginner hill for Christmas, so it opened on the 21st. and we ran it through Christmas. A lot of our Christmas camps were run. We had private lessons so quite successful."

However, Cornthwaite says they were not able to open one of their main runs until last Wednesday when the Slingshot run along with the chairlift opened to the public.   

"Through the weekend we were extremely busy with the race teams, we had NADY training on Sunday, just the general public," he said about the ski hill located on the North Bay escarpment. 

"It was so nice to see the chalet full of people. The hill was full of people and on the side we were still continuing to make snow on our Maples Run. They pushed it out Sunday night and they pushed more out Monday night doing some grooming on Tuesday." 

Cornthwaite is hoping to have at least the top half of Maples open and they will be able to cross over to Slingshot by Wednesday afternoon. 

However, mild weather could put a halt to any activity on the hill on the weekend. 

"Anything warmer than -5 is not that great. At the end of the week we are looking at Thursday or Friday maybe a little bit of a shutdown," he said. "However, next week and onward is looking very cold again so my hope is to have both runs open by the last week of January and then we will get into the Terrain Park and then into Ski Cross the first week or two of February." 

For the second year in a row, Average Joe's will be catering the Laurentian Cafe. 

"We have the runs made so they can get to the cafe and back to the lift and from my perspective it looked pretty busy when I was there on the weekend so we are hoping Average Joe's is happy," said Cornthwaite.