Eaglecrest Manager Matt Lillard began his speech at Thursday\u2019s Chamber of Commerce luncheon by asking audience members to raise their hands if they predict a snowy winter. Nearly everybody in the crowded Moose Lodge dining room raised a hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s better than I might have thought,\u201d Lillard joked.<\/p>\n
Maybe next week\u2019s chilly forecast was responsible for the optimistic outlook. Maybe it was Eaglecrest\u2019s impending opening weekend. Either way, the cheery outlook wasn\u2019t characteristic of the public at large, according to Lillard, who is trying to turn things around after two consecutive bad seasons.<\/p>\n
During the five years that he has been at Eaglescrest, Lillard has seen a few recording-setting years. His first season in Juneau, the 2011-2012 season, was one of the snowiest on record. There were 365 inches of snow at the base of the mountain. During the 2014-2015 season, the ski area\u2019s worst season on record, there were only 70 inches at the base of the mountain.<\/p>\n
The ski area only opened the upper mountain for five days that season compared to 96 days during the 2011-2012 season, a fact that Lillard said damaged people\u2019s confidence when it comes to buying season passes. Last year\u2019s 69-day season didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n
The ski area has suffered a 30 percent drop in season-pass sales, and the ski area has had to cut staff positions as a result, Lillard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really trying to fight that, to get confidence back in people,\u201d he told the chamber lunch crowd.<\/p>\n
Snowfall, above anything else, is what the ski area needs in order to restore that lost confidence. The weather is beyond Eaglecrest\u2019s control, but Lillard and his team are doing everything they can to make the coming season last as long as possible.<\/p>\n
Ski area staff spent a combined total of 1,500 hours trimming trails this summer to make sure they are skiable even in low-snow conditions. If brush and stumps aren\u2019t poking through the snow, skiers can make it down the mountain even if there\u2019s less snow than in years past, according to Lillard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to be as aggressive as possible in opening terrain,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re skiing off the top of the mountain and finding whatever patches of snow we can to get people off of that mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n
This weekend, Eaglecrest will open the Porcupine Lift, which they are able to supplement with man-made snow. It\u2019s still too early to tell when the ski area will be able to open the lifts to the upper mountain, but Lillard hopes that they\u2019re open soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to think it\u2019s going to happen in the next two weeks, but that really just depends on the weather,\u201d he told the Empire after the lunch.<\/p>\n
Temperatures are expected to drop into the teens and single digits at sea level next week.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eaglecrest Manager Matt Lillard began his speech at Thursday\u2019s Chamber of Commerce luncheon by asking audience members to raise their hands if they predict a snowy winter. Nearly everybody in the crowded Moose Lodge dining room raised a hand. \u201cThat\u2019s better than I might have thought,\u201d Lillard joked. Maybe next week\u2019s chilly forecast was responsible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":29632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29631"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}