Mild Christmas climes might seem pleasant for some but Quebec's winter recreational industries are getting walloped by the warmth.
"If we could just a couple of inches of snow, that would refresh people’s spirits," Ski St. Bruno CEO Michel Couture told CTV Montreal Friday. "It's very quiet. If you come now you'll have your own private ski hill."
He notes that the hill might be welcoming up to 5,000 skiers but is now down to somewhere around 400, a big loss for an industry that only operates for about 100 days per year.
Meanwhile almost all of Quebec’s snowmobile trails have been closed due to warm weather and rain.
Many trails are impassable and others are flooded and dangerous according to Quebec Snowmobile Association President Marc Larouche who describes the situation as "catastrophic" for the industry, which he says has an annual economic impact of over $2 billion in the province.
Snowmobiling also comes with fatal accidents and this year has been no exception, as a 16-year-old lost his life already this year in mid-December after being found dead near Lake Demontigny in Val D’Or.
Ice fishing has also been shut down by above-average temperatures.
The Atlantic tomcod fishing season was set to kick off today in St. Anne de la Perade but it has been put off because 500 ice fishing cabins could not be set up on the thin ice. About 85,000 fishermen visited the town last year.
The Quebec City Ice Hotel has, however, bumped up its opening date by two days and will now fling open its icy doors on January 3 at 10 a.m. in Charlesbourg. The warm weather has not harmed the structure, according to supervisor Gilles Roy, who noted that early cold weather in November helped advance the six-week work required to build the hotel.
