Kelly Canyon’s amazing winter season

RIRIE, Idaho (KIFI) - This is Kelly Canyon's longest winter season ever. It brought everybody onto the slopes.

Doug Swanson, Promotions manager for Kelly Canyon, says, "We had 55,000 visitors last year on a very rough year of snowfall from Mother Nature. I felt like we did a great job as a team, but this year were over 72,000 visitors and obviously still more to come."

The great success is all thanks to a very impressive winter snowfall.

Danny Harris, one of the mountain's groomers, hasn't seen anything like this in the 17 years he has been working.

"The last time I saw anything like this was in the 90's, like the early nineties. In fact, we had to in the nineties. We had to dig our chairlift number two down so people wouldn't hit their heads on the chairs."

This late snowfall could delay the summer season.

"It all depends on the melt," Doug said. "One, we're going to have to manage the melt where the water goes, not let it ruin our parking lot. And then it's got to be dry enough for us to get equipment on the mountain, which you have to be interesting. There's a lot of snow on the mountain."

Yet, skiers and snowboarders will rejoice as the ski resort looks to possibly stay open further into April.

"Last weekend on on March 25th was a 120 day season. We're going to be open this weekend and potentially it could be open Easter weekend. So the snow has been incredible. I think last week our base was 67, which is a record for us This time of year, we've had over 140 inches of snowfall since November 25th."

Kelly Canyon will be open at least for this coming Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Pommerelle and Pebble Creek are both open for one more weekend this coming Saturday and Sunday.