On December 6, 2024, at 2:25 PM, the bell rang at EWCTC, and an excited student bundled up and walked to his car through a snowy field, crossing a salt-covered road to a church where he had parked to avoid a $25 parking fee. He opened the car, turned it on, and pulled out of the church parking lot, raced to the slopes. With ski supplies packed the previous night, for today Sven Springs opens.
Seven Springs opened on Friday, December 6, after a disappointing start to the 2023-2024 ski season due to poor weather conditions. On opening day, three lifts were operating: the Polar Bear Express, Cortina Lift, and North Face Lift. All operated smoothly with acceptable amounts of stops and slowdowns, except for the North Face Lift, which experienced a 30-minute delay between 6-7 PM. During this time, chairlift conversation became a necessary distraction to survive the boredom.
Three freestyle terrain slopes were open, including Santa’s Beard, Arctic Blast, and The Alley, with only The Alley, featuring actual terrain and features, begins near the North Face parking lot. The resort had set up jumps, boxes, and other features that began on the Lost Boy Trail, some distance from both the Polar Bear Express and North Face Lifts.
Seven Springs was fortunate enough to have most of the resort covered in snow, which allowed for five separate slopes to be open: green circle slopes, including Philip’s Run, Fawn Lane Trail, Lost Boy Trail, and Deer Pass Trail; one blue square, Wagner Slope, where a skier was joking about the name, making “private military company” jokes.
Looking ahead to the 2024-25 ski season, Seven Springs and its owner, Epic, will face many challenges. Questions arise about how they will make the most of the natural snow they may receive and how they will manage the increasingly warm winters that Pennsylvania has been experiencing. The opening weekend of December 6, 2024 was relatively good, except for Sunday, when the weather stayed in the low 40s causing some of the snow to melt off the slopes, though the base remained strong with ideal snow. The second week of December 9 was expected to see temperatures above the 40s with rain, likely melting much of the snow currently on the mountain. As of December 11, 2024, at 9:46 AM, it appears that the base is nearly gone. Despite a solid opening weekend, the 2024-25 ski season is shaping up to be a difficult one, with the threat of losing all the snow already on the mountain after the opening weekend.
