Night skiing, snowboarding now open at Hatcher Pass Downhill Area

After a months-long equipment delay, the slope lights are officially on at Skeetawk, the community-based nonprofit groomed downhill ski area in Hatcher Pass. The addition adds long-anticipated after late day hours to the area’s weekly open times, and is another step forward in plans to expand amenities, said mountain manager Megan Justus.

Lights mounted on about 20 poles illuminate the lift line and the terrain park and all but one of the 13 groomed runs, she said. Officials had hoped to have them installed and on no later than early January. But while the poles have long been ready and staged at the base of the runs, the lights themselves were held up in a manufacturing delay. The team first flipped the switch for open hours Feb. 9.

Lighting means the area can stay open after dusk and serve skiers and snowboarders during after-school hours on Thursday and Fridays. That’s a shift from previous times that stretched from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m four days a week. Now the lift is instead spinning from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, plus over many MatSu Borough School District holidays.

Settling on those open hours took some experimentation, Justus said. After opening a full hour later on the first weekend with lighting, they decided to make another adjustment.

“We got some comments from most of the community that they really enjoyed that early morning. And so we are trying to split that difference,” she said. “We love our early risers.”

Justus said next year they hope to expand their staffing to allow for additional hours on all open days. That decision is based on whether they can invite school groups and others using bus transportation, a move that requires approval of an access road grading request currently sitting at the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), she said.

Until that change is approved and hours expansion happens, the same core staff that is shutting the area down on Friday evening is opening it back up Saturday morning.

“An early start right after that with only one shift is kind of unsafe, and really, it's not fair to the staff,” she said.

From a ticket sales perspective, shifting from daytime to weekend hours on Thursdays and Fridays is already proving successful, even after just one weekend under the change, she said.

“It's a remarkable increase from daytime hours to that after work, after school time, which is what we predicted all along,” she said. “Friday night there were remarkably more people than the daytime. So I think that it's going to continue to build steam like that.”

Justus expects one more much-anticipated improvement to open soon this season: bathrooms. Also the victim of delays, the indoor bathroom facility features toilets stalls and running water, a major upgrade from the four port-a-potties and single pit toilet currently located off the parking lot.

“There are toilets installed with water in the bowls, there are things that can turn on and off. We're really, really, really close to the finish line,” she said.

As for additions and improvements for future years, including a second lift moving users further up the mountain, work has recently gone from the dream stage to planning stage, she said. The nonprofit’s board is actively seeking funding for those projects and making plans for how to make them happen.

“It’s cool to see the improvements from last year and then looking at what's possible next year if we can get this road in and we get more deliberate programming,” she said. “It's just good steady momentum and growth.”