Ski Burke

Despite the recent chilly weather, summer is quickly approaching the NEK.  With warm weather on the way, Burke is gearing up for the summer months with Norco Bicycles!  Yesterday our brand new shipment of rental bikes landed at Burke Mountain and the bike build is scheduled to begin next week.  For those of you looking to bring a group to Burke this summer for some of the best mountain biking in North America, we can now accommodate you and all of your guests!  Get in touch with our Group Sales Associate for more information.

Before you head out to hit the golf course, beach or embark on other far away adventures, don't forget to order your 2013/14 season passes at the absolute best prices of the year.    Our Spring Pass Sale ends May 13th, so don't delay.  

Day 2 brought in some grease time and the crew got fully versed in fork operation, repair and maintenance-after some chalk talk on suspension theory, of course. We continued the day with brake design, operation, installation, fluid bleeds and maintenance.

The Burke Rental Shop team is on the road this week, off to the Norco Bike Headquarters in Toronto, Canada!  We are so excited to be here for hands-on expert training with the Norco staff.  This summer, Burke Mountain Resort and the Burke Bike Park are thrilled to offer our guests a full fleet of both downhill and XC mountian bikes with the opening of our new Norco Demo Center located at the Sherburne Base Lodge.   

Congratulations to Burke Mountain Academy Student Mikaela Shiffrin on her World Cup Slalom Championship!  We wish you all the best!  

As we head into the tail end of the winter, it should be no secret that we are enjoying the best conditions of the season right now. It is hard to believe that most of the winter is already behind us, which is even more reason to make a trip to Burke this month and enjoy the great snow conditions and weather. It has been a very busy season so far with a lot of ups and downs, coupled with news and excitement about the future of Burke Mountain. I will save my year in review post until after we close in mid April, but would like to take the opportunity now to introduce two new faces you have probably read about in local press and Burke media, seen around the mountain, and hopefully have had a chance to meet.   

It’s an exciting time at Burke Mountain. With new owners, QBurke Mountain Resorts, come new plans–big plans–for the mountain’s future. And as with any undertaking this big, people have questions. We hear them at the base lodge, on the lifts, at the country store, the gas station–pretty much everywhere. So we’re using this blog post to answer those questions, in order:

2013 is off to an interesting start. The first week was arguably some of the best skiing we have had at Burke in over two years followed by an obligatory "January thaw"  with spring-like snow conditions and a few nostalgic rides on the Willoughby chair-lift.  Some wildly windy weather during the third weekend has brought us to where we are now, into a deep freeze. With this midweek cold spell, we will again put the new snowmaking system to work and look to build snow pack on the upper mountain and trails that do not typically see snowmaking, such as the Gap. Our lift maintenance team works hard to keep all our lifts running so that our customers can enjoy as much time on the mountain as possible. We were thankful for this earlier in the month when the power line serving the Mid Burke Express went down. The Willoughby was brought on line quickly so that everyone could still enjoy top to bottom skiing, albeit a slower ride to the top.  Our Willoughby chair feels like it is hardly moving compared to the new detachable, but it is nice to have in situations like this.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday and a great New Year!  Early December started a little slow, but we were able to finish the month extremely strong. Thanks to our new, improved snowmaking system (and snowmakers), as well as a couple of perfectly timed snow storms, we had a great holiday week. We now have 50 of our 56 trails open with arguably the best ski conditions we have had in over two years. We will continue to make snow as temperatures allow-resurfacing some icy spots- including the first drop on Upper Dipper as well as other challenging areas. We have already made snow on a number of trails that have seen limited or no snowmaking in the past, including Upper Fox's Folly and Ledges, and we will continue on to The Gap and a few other steep favorites over the next week or so.  

Happy Holidays Burke Skiers & Riders