Marble Mountain's ski season is over. Now what?

Skiing and snowboarding at Marble Mountain ended with a huge splash on Sunday, with a massive turnout for the annual Slush Cup before the large alpine ski resort shut down, turned offthe lifts and stopped the groomersfor another year.

While the hill was open to the public for fewer than 100 days this season, staff say the winter was on par with the past two or three years. Weather and high winds meant the hill was closed to the public several days throughout the season.

Management also decided to close every Tuesday to save money, but it is not clear if that will happen again next year. The ski hill is subsidized by nearly$1 million each year to offset operating losses.

Now that the skis are no longer shined up, the mountain and the lodge shifts gears, and very loud ones at that. The Western Sno-RidersRace on the Rock happens Saturday and Sunday at the base of the mountain.

Rick O'Brienof the race committee says the snowmobiling event attracts close to 4,000 people, withcompetitors coming from the Maritimes and Quebec. Although O'Brien couldn't say exactly how much profit the races make, he did say it's "monumental" for the Corner Brook area.

Big money

"We have new enterprises starting, if you look at Appalachian Chalets out by Lundrigan Drive,that are catering to snowmobiles. They are advertising accommodations now for people coming for the race. And the hotels and the restaurants."

A lot of people who come for the races also stay a while to ride, he said.

"They don't just stay here and go home. As long as the weather conditions allow, they want to go up into the country,"

O'Brien says this year'sraces will attract so many spectators that the organizing committee has arranged a charter bus from Corner Brook to Marble Mountain to cut down on traffic.

Profit from the zip

When the snow melts, in a couple of months, Marble booms with tourism is another way. Marble Zip Tours' zipline and high-ropes Spider Challenge attractmost of its business in the summer months, bringing thousands to the mountain.

"In the summer we will do 75 per cent of the the total revenue for the business in those four months," said Stelman Flynn, Marble Zip Tours co-owner.

The zipline across Steady Brook Falls has been in operation for a decade now and brings in about 6,000 people a summer, many of them repeat zippers from western Newfoundland.

Flynn is pleased with the numbers, but would like to see more.

"There are lots of opportunities we could do at Marble Mountain from concerts to even waterslides. There are opportunities we should be looking at," he said.

Marble needs a revamp

Flynn said he doesn't think people look at Marble Mountain as a year-round tourist destination but he hopes that changes with the provincial government's plan to re-evaluate the hill.

The government announced a request for proposals for Marble Mountain the end of last June, calling for pitches to privately develop the provincially owned resortthrough a sale, lease or otherwisewhile keeping the ski operations intact.

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The request for proposals closed Aug. 3 with Tourism Minister Christopher Mitchelmore saying onlythat the department has three possible proposals fromunnamed private sector individuals or groupsthat want to buy the property.

Flynn says he isn't one of the prospective buyers,but he says he believes Marble Mountain will look a lot different by this time next year.

"I certainly hope as we enter into the next season that we can basically have the hill turned over to private enterprise," he said.

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