Warm weather impacting winter sports based businesses, but it’s not all bad.

For the first time in years, Grand Targhee Mountain Resort east of Driggs is pushing back their opening start date from Friday November 18 due to a lack of snow.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve pushed back our start date,” said Ken Rider, a marketing specialist for Grand Targhee Mountain Resort. “We were looking at our records last week, we think it was either the (19)98 or the (19)99 season.”

With the exception of the higher mountain peaks or steep north facing slopes, most of the mountain is snowless. Grand Targhee does have the capability of making snow, but it hasn’t been cold enough to justify turning the snow-makers on.

“We haven’t set a new opening date,” said Rider. “We have been keeping an eye on the weather. We need a good snow storm to come in, plus cold temperatures to get the snow making going.”

Employees are still expected to show up for work as the resort will find other things to do until the snow flies. “We’re going to go ahead and focus on getting our staff trained for the season and get everybody ready,” said Rider.

Farther down the mountain closer to Driggs, many local businesses live for the snow as it means skier traffic brings in customers.

“Targhee’s fortunate in that typically it will deliver at some point, it just matters on when,” said Bryce Broderick, manager of Peaked Sports in Driggs. “We’re affected by weather any time of the year.”

Luckily for Peaked Sports and other stores in the region, the warm weather means that other outdoor sport options are still pulling people in.

“We’ve been pretty good this year because the weather’s been nice enough that people are still shopping for bikes,” said Broderick.

Even Grand Targhee has benefited in some ways from the warm weather. Construction on a new chair lift is far ahead of schedule as crews have been able to work longer than initially planned.