Sask. Table Mountain opens for the season

(Noah Rishaug/CTV News)

With the amount of snow that Saskatchewan has seen over the past few weeks, ski hills are beginning to open their doors to the public for the season. At Table Mountain, just outside of the Battlefords, this last weekend marked their grand opening.

This year sees the ski hill open notably earlier than last year, following an early winter without much snow.

This year, there has been no shortage of snow, areas of the province saw large snow dumps over November and December. Despite the deluge of snow, Lawrence Blouin, the general manager at Table Mountain says that it still was not enough natural snow to cover the entire hill.

"Natural snow is certainly nice, but we have to make snow. We never get enough natural snow to ski and snowboard on," said Blouin.

The past number of weeks have been spent preparing the hill. The effort is a lot more involved than just letting the snow fall.

"There's a lot of work that goes into this before skiers and snowboarders can enjoy themselves," said Blouin

Blouin explained the process of getting the hill ready.

"Basically with the snow guns you blow big mounds of snow with blowers, then you go in with the snow caps and level it all off. Once it's levelled off we have to go in with the tillers to get the surface you see here," said Blouin

Table Mountain will be operating through the winter, six days a week and closed on Mondays. As the Christmas week approaches, hours may vary.