Central Ohio ski season coming to a close, shortened by mild winter
ZANESFIELD, Ohio (WCMH) – After a mild start to the season and some ups and downs, especially with the temperatures, ski season in central Ohio is coming to an end.
Mad River Mountain and Snow Trails announced their last day open will be March 10.
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“It’s a great day, there’s hardly anyone here and snow looks like it’s good so I’m looking forward to it,” Anton Freihofner said. “I wanted to get different types of snow experience and things of that sort.”
He said skiing sounded better than doing yard work so he spent part of his Friday at Mad River Mountain. He also had some lift tickets left he wanted to use before the season ended. Despite a lot of mud and grass visible, six of the resort’s 20 trails were still open. Sunday will mark the finish line of 65 straight days being open.
“The ones that come out and see us they’re just happy we’re open because there hasn’t been a lot of snow in their yards so they don’t think we have snow here, but we still do and we’re going to keep skiing as long as we can,” said Alajos Fiel, General Manager at Mad River Mountain.
He’s worked at the resort since 2009. He said mother nature this season brought new challenges each week.
“We’ve always had issues throughout the winter with weather but this one seems to be a little bit bigger of a stretch of that temperamental weather where we get the warm and rain and like I said the teams done an amazing job keeping the spirits up and excitement up to get us back out there,” Fiel said.
He said it’s a bittersweet time of year. The team at Snow Trails had similar feelings. Weather allowed for 71 days open this season. That’s about two weeks less than what they’ve averaged the past five years, according to Nate Wolleson, Marketing Manager for the resort.
“It’s a lot of fun, the freedom the slopes provide, so yeah, of course, we don’t want to cut that short, we want to make sure we offer as many days as possible but also interest starts to decrease as well,” he said.
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