Ski Cape Smokey

Ski Cape Smokey is a ski hill located in the Cape Breton Highlands of Nova Scotia. Ski Cape Smokey offers 16 alpine runs, 2 lifts, hill grooming and snow making. Facilities include a lodge at the base and top of the mountain. The base lodge feature a restaurant, bar, ski school and hill offices.

Ski Cape Smokey is known for being Nova Scotia's highest elevation ski mountain at over a 320 m, 305 m of it skiable, and for its ocean views. The mountain receives an average of 381 cm of snowfall annually. However weather is often unpredictable and above freezing.

Since 2002 the ski resort has had continuing financial problems. This issue continues and affects the operation of the area. It suffers from a low population base in the local area and remoteness from major population areas. Sydney is 90 minutes away and Halifax 4.5 hours away. In 2006, the ski hill closed. Many years following that, volunteers from the Ski Cape Smokey Society, a non-profit care taker group, attempted to re-open the resort. After many unsuccessful attempts, Ski Cape Smokey was finally opened February 2011, with very limited parts of the mountain for local skiers using the lower mountain poma lift. Without snow making it cannot operate in the profitable Christmas/New Year holiday period.

Facilities at the hill area are in need of much repair and deteriorating very quickly. The quad chair which has not been run or inspected in many years may require substantial repair at a high cost. The same is true in the neglect of the snow making system which may not be functional and have to be replaced.

Many prospective buyers have done due diligence and inspected the hill, but none are willing to make a commitment to long term operation of the ski center. A search for a permanent solution continues. Permanent closure of the ski hill and sales of the assets is a possibility in the future.

Read more about Ski Cape Smokey:  Trails, See Also, Sources

Famous quotes containing the words ski and/or cape:

    The goal for all blind skiers is more freedom. You don’t have to see where you’re going, as long as you go. In skiing, you ski with your legs and not with your eyes. In life, you experience things with your mind and your body. And if you’re lacking one of the five senses, you adapt.
    Lorita Bertraun, Blind American skier. As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 29 (January 1976)

    A solitary traveler whom we saw perambulating in the distance loomed like a giant. He appeared to walk slouchingly, as if held up from above by straps under his shoulders, as much as supported by the plain below. Men and boys would have appeared alike at a little distance, there being no object by which to measure them. Indeed, to an inlander, the Cape landscape is a constant mirage.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)