Ski season underway, but is it here to stay?
By Roberta Bell and Sarah Turnbull Early snowfall “takes some of the pressure off” the Ottawa area’s main ski resort, Camp Fortune, but owner Peter Sudermann says it doesn’t guarantee prime skiing throughout the season. Camp Fortune, in Chelsea, Que. just outside Gatineau, opened one of its 23 runs on Nov. 22 and two more last Friday. It will be open daily as of this Friday. The resort plans long-range, Sudermann said, but once ski and snowboard season begins, unpredictable weather patterns means ski conditions vary “week to week.” Last week, about 25 centimetres of snow fell, which gave people “the perception that everything’s open,” Sudermann said. “When they call up and you say, ‘Well, we have two lifts and it’s really three runs open,’ they kind of wonder what’s wrong.” The answer, Sudermann said, is nothing. It takes about 900 hours, or 38 days, of snowmaking to open all of the runs at Camp Fortune. “It is very much a science,” Sudermann said. During ideal cold and dry...
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