Optimist Hill thriving as winter officially arrives in Saskatchewan

All winter long in Saskatchewan one thing was missing, that one thing was the snow.

Until Friday when winter made its long awaited arrival to Saskatchewan.

Ski and snowboard hills have had to improvise and make their own snow, or just remain closed like Table Mountain.

Optimist Hill in Saskatoon started making their own snow in late November and was finally able to open in early December after a bit of a delay.

But now that the snow has fallen Maxine Tebbe, General Manager of Optimist Hill said people’s mindset have changed.

“We had a lot of people out on the fifth because now we had some fresh powder out on the hill,” said Tebbe. “People are now starting to feel that winter activities are happening.”

“It’s helped the mindset of people in Saskatoon that winter is now here.”

Despite the recent snowfall Optimist Hill will be shutting down for a week to make even more snow.

“We’ll re-open on the 17th after another week of making snow with all of our park features,” said Tebbe. “We’ll be going another five, six days straight of 24 hours of making snow.”

As the temperatures begin to rapidly drop below freezing, Optimist Hill shares what their temperature threshold is.

“We do close when it gets to minus 24,” said Tebbe. “Just because of the fact that we don’t have shelter out here.”

The temperature dip is coming at an almost perfect time though as the hill works to make more snow.

A bonus for Optimist Hill is that they were able to be open during the Christmas break allowing for people to come visit the hill while they were off.

Tebbe said it was a busy time but they had hoped it would be busier.

“We had a lot of people coming out because the temperatures were nice,” said Tebbe. “We didn’t see some numbers that we were maybe thinking because people could still bike outside.”

The staff is thrilled to have been open during the warm weather and hope that now that there is snow on the ground more people will come out to the hill.