Mother Nature could not have been more kinder.

The ski gods were smiling on Mt. Baldy this past weekend, providing sunshine and warm temperatures to those who ventured up the hill to partake in the Festival of Colours event hosted Baldy Mountain Resort.

The ski hill is accessible by driving up McKinney Rd. east of Oliver for about 40 minutes, or taking Canyon Road off Hwy. 3 east of Osoyoos, about a 50-minute drive from the townsite.

It’s a beautiful drive, especially at this time of fall, and while bumpy in a few areas, the road is easy to manoeuvre for all vehicles.

The big news? There is new management at Baldy Mountain Resort, with Joey O’Brien taking over as Managing Director. He has some big plans for the hill and patrons.

“What’s new? A decade-worth of deferred maintenance is now done. We’re not going to be fancy. It’s an undersized lodge and an undersized parking lot. But the mountain is extraordinary. The terrain is unbelievable. The snow is epic. And we’re just going to have to cope with the deficiencies of some things being out of balance,” said O’Brien during a one-on-one chat at Sunday’s open house. “But the stuff that matters – the guest services, the food quality, the lessons, the rentals – all of that stuff, should be great, or as good as we can. And we’re going to measure ourselves regularly, almost daily, to make sure our performance standards stay above 8-out-of-10.”

It was busy this past weekend. Spectacular weather encouraged many people to drive up the mountain to tour the facilities, enjoy a burger, check out Baldy’s season passes, and ride the Suger Lump Quad Chair 742 feet to the top.

The line-up for passes was constant – and lengthy.

I took advantage of the free ride up the mountain. I mean, why not on a day like this? It was sunny. It was calm. It was peaceful and quiet. The view, of course, is fantastic. And how often do you get to ride down the lift and enjoy the scenery.

Upon reaching the alpine, we were met by Kyle Donovan, a member of Baldy’s staff.

He had the best seat in the ‘house’, hanging out all day at the top of the chair lift, greeting people, and answering any questions he could.

“Everyone has questions on how it’s going to be different – because some people haven’t had great experiences with the previous ownership. A lot of people are looking forward to the season,” offered up Kyle. “Joey has helped revitalized resorts in other parts of the country, so he’s got a great track record doing that.

“The first priority is getting the lifts operational. The Eagle Lift is currently being worked on and should be load-tested this week.”

Once back on land, I cornered O’Brien to chat more about the hill, and specifically, hosting people prior to the ski season.

“I don’t think they’ve ever had an open house around here. The big thing I keep re-learning is the decades of history associated with this place. Decades. I keep hearing, “My dad built that trail”, or “Our family name is”. That’s the big learning curve for me,” said O’Brien. “Some are newcomers to the sport. Most are newcomers to us, and they can be people who moved into Oliver or Osoyoos – and, ‘once’ skied, ‘like’ to ski, or ‘haven’t’ skied much lately. And so our marketing, our pricing, our programming seems to have grabbed them, and they’re going, “We’re doing this as a family. We have to grow the market. To do that we need good pricing, great lessons, good programming, we need fun.”

There will be days set aside for special events – such as a program entitled Baldy Babes on Monday, and for the men, Steak N’ Ski on Friday.

And more than $100,000 has been spent on equipment.

“What’s exciting to me is I get to experience a mountain resort atmosphere but a Maritime ski resort feel to it. A lot of the resorts in the Maritimes have a closer feel to them, because there are not as many people and they are smaller mountains,” explained Donovan. “We’re going to try and keep that feel but get some more foot traffic through to help sustain the resort.

“This is actually only my second week in British Columbia. I’m excited to snowboard in some mountains this year.”

As are the rest of us.

With nearly 50 centimetres of snow sitting at the top of the Eagle Chair, there may not be much time between now and the opening of ski season.

“There’s good snow up high,” summarized O’Brien. “We’re T-minus, what 35 days. Or, 75 centimetres. If we had the snow at the top down here, we would be open.”

At this point, Baldy Mountain Resort is slated to open Dec. 1.

-Dale Cory