The newly renamed Nitehawk Year-Round Adventure Park, formerly known as the Nitehawk Recreation Area, is hoping to have a soft opening for this weekend. Snow-making began at the ski hill back in October. Assistant General Manager Johnathan Clarkson says their snow making crews are getting more capable and efficient with their snow making every year.
“We’re now running more guns and maximizing our snow making potential with the system that we have. We can max out at 700 gallons per minute and every season we put about 23 million gallons of water on the hill. Our goal is actually to get that number down because the less water we have to use and the sooner we can get the hill open the better it is for us and also for the Wapiti River.”
Only a small section of the hill is expected to be available for the soft opening as Clarkson says they tend to open things up in stages because once the snow starts flying.
“We usually start with our tube zone because that’s typically where we start with our Christmas parties and corporate functions leading up to the Christmas season, and then our terrain park which is a big area of our business that kids really look forward to. We are actually working again this year with Wade Cose out of Calgary, who comes up and does terrain park builds.”
Clarkson says they are also very excited about re-branding the hill this year as a park where you can enjoy outdoor recreation all year round.
“We’re not going to be able to roll it all out at once, but people are going to see it slowly. We’re changing out all our signage, we’re changing all our jackets and all our staff clothing, everything on our website, the Facebook page, social media and everything, but it’s bigger than that. We’re going to be re-educating the community and really telling them that we are a year round place for recreation. That’s where the adventure park came in as well because you don’t have adventures indoors, you have them outside.”
The re-brand includes a new logo along with the new name, which Clarkson says really embodies the work they have done over the past 10 years to grow Nitehawk from a ski hill into a year round place where people can get outdoors and get active.