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Major ski mountains in Maine open after Monday's storm, but not without difficulties

Staff at Saddleback said getting chairlifts running was crucial as the mountain enters its lucrative holiday stretch.

RANGELEY, Maine — After closing for five days following a destructive rain and wind storm, Saddleback Mountain is open to skiers and snowboarders once again.

Located in the Rangeley Lakes region, Saddleback lost a large portion of its natural snow and sustained washouts on many of its dirt roads near the base area, though damage was far milder than at Sunday River, another ski resort that opened its lifts on Saturday for the first time since the storm.

"We recover well," Saddleback’s Chief Revenue Officer P.J. McSparran said on Wednesday, "We're very used to comebacks."

Despite this confidence, McSparran admits there were times after Monday’s storm when the prospect of reopening within a week didn’t seem as attainable.

"What was going through my mind was: how are we going to open and welcome the thousands of skiiers that we normally would this time of year?" McSparran added.

That worry was rooted in a stark financial fact: roughly 20 percent of Saddlebacks lift ticket sales happen in the week after Christmas, according to McSparran.

If the mountain couldn’t reopen by that window, many staff agree, revenue could have suffered greatly.

Aside from the work of ground crews to clean up road damage, part of the reason Saddleback could open as soon as it did is thanks to the manufactured snow on many of its ski runs.

"Fortunately, the manmade snow holds up beautifully," Bruce Lancaster, the mountain’s director of facilities, said. "It actually stands up better and longer."

Lancaster says that has to do with a chemical additive in the snow that makes it more resistant to melting than what falls naturally.

But moving forward, the staff at Saddleback, having weathered a destructive blow early in the season, have no plans of giving up on the winter or relying on just the snow they can make.

As Brand Manager, Molly Shaw puts it, "There's a lot of winter ahead of us, so we'll recover, and it'll be a great season."

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