Londoners have had the luxury of enjoying winter sports right at their front doors since 1949. Boler Mountain—formerly known as the London Ski Club—has opened their doors to the community for decades providing them with a place to ski, snowboard, tube, and do much more.
Boler Mountain chair lift
Greg Strauss is part of the management team at the mountain and says that they always aim to provide the community with “Ontario’s most dynamic place for outdoor adventure.” This year however has been difficult to do that because of the weather and Boler has suffered some serious financial difficulties.
Strauss says that Boler had a great opening at the beginning of the season in early November and they began their artificial snow making process right away. They worked thinking that December would be colder and snowier than November as per usual but were in for a shock when this proved untrue.
“We did not expect November to be colder than December, and this was a big problem for our snow making process. We were making snow at -2 and -3 degrees which is very expensive, and it didn’t help that the weather was not cooperating” – Greg Strauss
Strauss says that their artificial snow was melting faster than they could produce it, costing tons of money and making it impossible to keep all of their runs open. This forced the mountain to offer their lift tickets at reduced costs and for the hills that were operating to be continuously groomed.
The constant rain storms and unpredictable temperatures also caused the hills to become icey over the Christmas Break, hurting their busy season tremendously.
Strauss says that “when people see green grass on their lawns during the winter they don’t even think about the possibility of skiing or snowboarding. So on top of our bad conditions, we were also dealing with this hurting the business.”
Strauss says that this year will be nowhere as good as the last in terms of revenue, but they are hopeful that things will be picking up soon and this past weekend was a great indication of this.
Over the past weekend the resort saw thousands of people on their open runs and business was booming. The hills were in better condition from the previous days heavy snow falls and there was some powder on the runs. The staff were working hard to accommodate all of the eager Londoners who were making up for lost time.
