RUMFORD — As heavy snow fell Wednesday afternoon, Black Mountain Ski Resort general manager Jim Carter said he couldn’t recall when the Rumford ski hill last received natural snow.

“It’s been so long, I couldn’t even tell you,” Carter said.

But he did know that his snow-making crew made twice as much snow than they have in past winters. “Without it, we wouldn’t have any trails open at all,” he said.

The resort stopped making snow on Feb. 15, enabling the crew to double as lift attendants and help with the vacation week rush.

With natural snowfall looming through the weekend — just in time for Black Mountain’s second annual two-day Winterfest — Carter wasn’t ready Wednesday to accept the forecast.

“For me, it hasn’t been right yet,” he said. “The last time we were supposed to have gotten 20 inches, I don’t know where it went, but we didn’t get it on the mountain.”

“They promised us quite a bit of snow and we totally got nothing,” Carter said. “I don’t even think we saw a flake. I haven’t bothered looking at the forecasts, so I figured I’d just wake up tomorrow and be surprised one way or the other.”

Officials at three other resorts said the last significant snow came on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend (Jan. 16-18) when more than a foot fell. That’s why snow-making efforts have paid off, boosting both revenues and skier visits, they said.

Sugarloaf/USA spokesman Ethan Austin said the Carrabassett Valley resort had 4 inches of new snow Wednesday morning, with a possible 20 to 30 inches more through Saturday, depending on how upcoming storms track.

They’ve pumped more than 135 million gallons of water to make snow covering 500 acres this season, which ends sometime in May. That’s 17 million gallons more than they pumped all of last season, Austin said.

“We got after it and most of it came in December and January,” he said. “We worked hard to pile it on really early (to build base depths), and then that allowed us to pick and choose our times in January and February when it made the most sense to make more.”

From Feb. 12 through Feb. 22, Sugarloaf was 5.6 percent higher in revenue and 7.9 percent ahead in paid skier visits versus the same period last year, Austin said.

“Our snow-making was a huge factor in this success,” he said.

Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry, which opened in October, has pumped almost 400 million gallons of water to make 2,160 acre feet of snow on 500 acres this season, said Bill Brown, who is in charge of snow-making and energy management. 

Sunday River stopped making snow on Friday night, but will resume when natural snowfall stops.

“We’ve made a lot more snow this year than in the last two years, particularly in January and February,” Brown said. “Our philosophy is if we can’t make skiing conditions better, then we probably shouldn’t make snow.”

 Mount Abram Ski Resort in Greenwood stopped making snow on Feb. 10 after pumping about 8.6 million gallons of water at 9,500 gallons a minute into snow-making.

“That’s a heck of a lot of snow for us,” marketing director Kevin Rosenberg said.

It paid off Friday, their best day yet in a season that has seen business increase over last year.

Rosenberg said that since mid-January, temperatures and humidity have remained low, enabling Mount Abram to make snow 14 days longer than normal to reach its March 28 closing date. That, coupled with an expected 12 to 18 inches of snow by Saturday, “should help us get well into March,” Rosenberg said.

“We usually stop making snow by the third weekend in January, so going this far into February has really helped get us over this hump Mother Nature has thrown at us,” he said.

The big question is what this weekend’s snowstorm will do, Austin said.

“We’ve seen totals of 20 to 30 inches by the time Sunday morning rolls around, so that’s what we’re hoping for, obviously, but we’ll take whatever Mother Nature brings at this point,” he said.

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