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Pisgah snowmaking could start next week

Snow is made at Mount Pisgah Ski Center in Saranac Lake in December 2012. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

SARANAC LAKE — Mount Pisgah Ski Center is on track to begin snowmaking next week so it can potentially open for the season a few days before Christmas.

“We are all ready to begin making snow; however, the ground isn’t frozen yet, so we’re hoping, with some cold weather this weekend, things will tighten up a bit,” Mount Pisgah manager Garrett Foster said Thursday. “We’re hoping to make snow sometime later next week. With a little help from Mother Nature and a week of snowmaking, we’d like to open for the beginning of the school break.”

Christmas vacation for the Saranac Lake Central School District starts Dec. 23 and runs through Jan. 2.

Foster said he’s hoping for a better, longer ski season than last winter. Due to a bleak, rainy and snow-less winter, the mountain was only open 51 days last year, well below its average of 80 days.

“It was an extensive snowmaking effort just to stay open,” he said. “We were basically open three-quarters of the season on strictly man-made snow.”

“I hope we have the winter we had three years ago, when we had a phenomenal season,” Foster said. “The last two seasons have been a struggle for snowmaking. It is what it is. It’s just Mother Nature, playing her game.”

Snowmaking at the village-run mountain is done by a combination of village workers, Foster’s crew at the mountain and volunteers from the Friends of Mount Pisgah.

Last month, the village Board of Trustees approved increases in daily lift ticket and season pass rates at the mountain, based on recommendations from Foster and village Manager John Sweeney. It’s the first rate increase in several years at the mountain. Village officials have said the new rates will help account for the increase in the state’s minimum wage and bring the mountain closer to the rates charged by comparable ski areas.

Beyond that, there’s not much new at the mountain this season.

“Not much has changed, hours-wise,” Foster said. “Our office is open now on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5 to 7 p.m. for season tickets and locker rentals.”

Mount Pisgah will again host an Empire State Winter Games event in early February: ski racing for 12- and 10-and-under age groups. The venue hosted the games’ first fat-tire mountain bike races last year, but they’ve been moved to Whiteface Mountain for this year’s games.

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