WASHINGTON — Mission Ridge becomes the first ski area to open in Washington state for the 2025-26 season, bucking the warmer and less-snowy than average snow year.
Tony Hickok, the Chief Marketing Officer for Mission Ridge, said the 10-person snow-making team would work 24 hours a day when the conditions were favorable to turn on the snow guns.
“Snow making windows for us are short-lived,” Hickok said, “We have the best snow-making crew in the Pacific Northwest. They were able to take advantage of every opportunity.”
Mission Ridge’s base sits higher than any of the state’s other ski areas. It’s also situated on the east side of the Cascades, where drier, less humid air makes more favorable snow-making conditions.
Every other ski area in the state is at the whim of Mother Nature in order to open. Right now, the Pacific Ocean is in a La Nina pattern, which typically favors heavier snowfalls and colder temperatures for the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s especially salient to us because that’s ocean-driven and in the Pacific Ocean, just right where the base of our mountains in Washington touch, that’s the original piece of snowmaking equipment.” Jordan Phillips, the president of the Pacific Northwest Ski Association.
Thanksgiving weekend is the ideal opening weekend for the mountains in this region. Hickok said it’s hit that opening in 11 of the last 13 seasons.
It’s one of the early cash-cow weekends if lifts are able to turn.
“Financially, it definitely has an impact when you don’t make some of those key weekends when families and friends get together and want to go to the mountains,” Phillips said.
Phillips said most resorts hire nearly all of their operations and hospitality staff by that time, so without snow, the largest expense for mountains is being paid, with little to no revenue coming in until more snow comes.
“This weekend we get a little tease,” said Michael Fagin, an operational meteorologist for the snow-forecasting site Powder Poobah.
Fagin expects temperatures to drop significantly by the weekend of December 12, helping with snowfall. A big atmospheric river shaping up before that will give heavy snow totals at the highest elevations.
Fagin does point out that many areas are building a base, and snow isn’t completely washing away. He thinks the PNW is primed for a bounce-back by the turn of the year, pointing to the National Weather Service’s long-range outlook.
“They’ve been saying all along that December, January, February, we’re expecting above average snowfall for the Cascades,” Fagin said.
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