EDEN — The Nordic Valley Ski Resort is quickly returning to full capability after a crippling fire temporarily closed the resort nearly two weeks ago.

On Jan. 15, an early morning fire raged through the resort’s barn, which included its restaurant, offices and ticketing facilities. The fire occurred at a time when the resort was closed and no injuries were reported, though firefighters had difficulties with the elements and digging out a usable fire hydrant.

Nordic Valley General Manager Pascal Begin told the Standard-Examiner on Friday that, while still somewhat limited in what can be done on site, services are being restored quickly.

“Things are moving fast, things are moving well,” he said. “We were very happy to be able to get our season pass holders on the mountain after three days. That was worry No. 1 — getting skiers out on the hill as fast as we could while being signed off by the county and the health department. At this point in time, we are very close to being able to reopen across the board with all of the amenities in terms of rentals being online and ski school being online too.”

He said the resort currently can’t sell tickets on-site.

“We’ve asked skiers and riders to buy their lift tickets online,” he said. “Since it’s online, we can verify the purchase at the base. Right now we’ve got our offices back, we’ve got restrooms, we’ve got a ticket office, we’ve got food trucks that are scheduled through the next month and everything is just about to be up and running with the internet and being able to do transactions at all our points of sale.”

Some trailers have been moved onto the Nordic Valley site to provide temporary office space for workers and some other services such as restrooms and ticketing.

Begin said there’s been a great outpouring of support from the regional ski community.

“The outpouring of love and shoutouts for Nordic and its employees have been great,” he said. “We’ve got five mountains from Utah that have reached out and said, ‘Hey, your season pass holders had it rough. We want to give them a day that they can come out and ski for free or at a heavily discounted price.'”

While temporary measures are being put in place to help keep the resort running throughout the remainder of the ski season, Begin said long-term recovery plans for a new facility still have yet to formulate.

“We’ve only scratched the surface,” he said. “I have personally been involved pretty much exclusively with the reopening and the operations here. The landowners — Nordic Village Ventures — we have started the conversation with them, but at this stage, it’s very vague and there’s nothing in concrete yet. … We are definitely going to have more news on that soon.”

He said the Nordic Valley staff and the community at large have stepped up in a big way in the resort’s time of need.

“The staff have all jumped in and are working to be back on track really, really fast,” he said. “Weber County has been very gracious to be able to assist us and help us with, ‘These are the boxes you’ve got to check before you can open and what are the next steps.’ The community, Weber County officials and the team here, everybody’s been so stoked about coming back.”

And he said the reopening couldn’t come at a better time in what had been a less-than-optimal start to the region’s ski season.

“We just got some good snow, too,” he said. “It’s been such a dry year up until just the week before MLK (Day) and then we get dumped on a lot of snow. I think the fact that the conditions are very good right now fueled everybody to really (say), ‘Let’s reopen fast and get skiers on the mountain.'”

For more information on the reopening process and ticketing information, visit https://www.nordicvalley.ski or the Nordic Valley Ski Resort Facebook page.

Newsletter