With only a few more weeks of ski and snowboard weather, Hudson Bay Mountain will end a successful season.
General Manager Lex Rei-Jones said the number of people visiting the mountain has increased.
“We were pretty busy this year. We saw a steady increase in numbers over the past couple of years.”
She added the main increase was in the size of school groups going to the mountain.
The mountain hoped the 2021/22 season would be better than the 2020/21 season, but Rei-Jones said staffing was an issue.
“We dealt with a staffing shortage as a lot of places did, and that was pretty brutal to deal with,” she said.
Due to the shortages that year, she said the mountain had to cut some operational days off their calendar, and on some days, only some of the lifts were open.
That season the mountain also had issues with its 43-year-old chair lift, which has since been repaired.
“We did a major upgrade on our chair lift over the summer, so that dealt with those issues that we were experiencing last year,” Rei-Jones said.
She added the funding for the upgrades was from a grant the Smithers Mountain Bike Association had applied for in partnership with the mountain.
‘We are a for-profit business, so we’re not usually eligible for grants. They came to us because it’s in our plan to open for summer operations and to offer lift-access mountain biking.”
Rei-Jones hopes weekend mountain biking, sightseeing, and hiking can start this August.
After the staffing shortages in the 2021/22 season, she was glad to see staff numbers increase this year.
“I think I panicked a little bit after last year and didn’t want the same thing to happen. So I started doing job postings in June and July, and it was really slow coming in.”
She added the slow response to the job postings made her nervous.
“September hit, which is when I would typically be doing the hiring and resumes started coming in like usual.”
Snowfall on the mountain also played in the resort’s favour.
“January was pretty dry, but we had more than double our average snowfall in February,” Rei-Jones said.
The last day of winter operations is April 9th.