RUMFORD — Black Mountain of Maine ski resort opened its alpine venue for the season the day after Christmas and will have its Nordic trails ready by Wednesday, Dec. 28.

The resort is also hosting the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association‘s U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships Jan. 2-8.

On Friday, spokesman Craig Zurhorst touted the ski hill’s snowmaking work, enabling them to open as scheduled despite uncooperative weather.

“Black Mountain had very ambitious plans for the start of this winter season,” he said.

Those plans included hosting a snowmobile hill climb, which they successfully did on Dec. 17, opening the alpine trails and hosting the national Nordic championships.

“Given the record-breaking warmth of the late fall and temperatures too warm to make snow, it would have been easy to expect a lot of cancellations,” Zurhorst said.

“Not this year, and not at Black Mountain.”

This year, the Rumford ski hill added eight new, high-capacity snowmaking fan guns from Techno Alpin, SMI, Lanko and Johnson Control to complement an existing fleet of six fan guns.

To ensure they had power to keep the guns running, Black Mountain also had several portable generators on loan from Pineland Farms, Milton-Cat, PC Construction and Cianbro, Zurhorst said.

“The extraordinarily warm weather has created challenges for every New England business that depends on snow,” Andy Shepard, president of the Maine Winter Sports Center, which owns Black Mountain, said Friday.

“But the U.S. Cross-Country Championships are an important opportunity for the town of Rumford, the Chisholm Ski Club, Black Mountain and the whole state of Maine to put its best foot forward.

“Not being ready was not an option,” Shepard said. “These companies recognized the importance of this event to the state, understood there was a role for them to play and have stepped up in inspiring ways.”

Temperatures turned cold on Friday night and stayed cold through the weekend, allowing the mountain to make a lot of snow, Zurhorst said.

The resort and the Chisholm Ski Club are hosting the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships for the second consecutive year and faced extreme weather challenges last year as well, Zurhorst said.

“We had snow early last year, lost it a few weeks before the races and never really got good snowmaking temperatures leading up to the event,” Carlie Casey, chief of competition for the championships, said Friday.

“This year we wanted to make sure that through technology and planning we were giving ourselves every possible chance to put on good races.

“Thanks to some really great volunteers and some very generous corporate sponsors, we have that this year,” Casey said.

For more information, visit www.uscrosscountryskichampionships2012.org/, www.skiblackmountain.org/ and www.chisholmskiclub.org/.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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