Nick Piazza isn’t happy about about the “miserable” weather we’ve had this past December. The owner of Sleeping Giant Ski Lodge and his team couldn’t even find a time when making snow would help open the slopes to skiers since the official start to winter.

“We have had our pumps in the river ready to blow snow for the bulk of December, however the warm nighttime temperatures (often due to heat inversions) have only given us a couple of nights where we could have made snow,” he said in an end-of-the-month update.

Last Friday the team thought they were close to being able to open the Bighorn run if they could get a little help from the snowmaking machines, but a leak in one of their main lines providing water to the snowmaking system prevented them from starting.

“Our outdoor team is working on solutions to solve this problem, but currently our snowmaking capabilities are offline,” he said.

Sleeping Giant invested $100K buying two new fan guns, several replacement wands and a couple of large pumps “with some success in the winter of 2021,” but the aging piping network for water on the mountain is prone to blowouts and other failures.

“We looked at doing some upgrades there this summer but, in the end, decided to focus on trail expansion and the tubing park,” Piazza said. “I would make the same decision again given the chance. We had to expand and develop the mountain, but obviously the failure of the system this week has put us in a tough spot.”

There just hasn’t been a lot of snow in Wyoming at this point. Currently the state’s SNOTELs (a network composed of over 900 automated data collection sites located in remote, high-elevation mountain watersheds in the western U.S. used to monitor snowpack, precipitation, temperature and other climatic conditions) are reading 65% of median with a basin high of 83% in the Wind River Basin and and a basin low of 16% in the South Platte Basin in southern Wyoming. Last year at this time the state was at 122%, and at 105% in 2022.

Piazza remains hopeful that we’ll see positive weather trends coming our direction after the new year.

“Staff have tried doing some skiing and riding on the back side of the Headwall heading down towards the bunny hill. While the snow is not great, it is close to skiable, and getting a foot of snow on the bunny hill would probably solve most of our problems,” he said, adding “Sadly however, this situation is not one we can quickly solve by writing a check or putting in more hours.”

In the absolute worst-case scenario where Sleeping Giant doesn’t see a clear path to getting the mountain open soon, they will be preparing to provide season pass holders with refunds, Piazza said.

But, with snow and colder temperatures forecasted for this coming weekend, skiers might see the lodge opening soon. The National Weather Service is calling for a chance of snow near the East Entrance to Yellowstone National Park starting Friday through Tuesday with high temperatures in the high 20s.