OTSEGO TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — After a challenging last couple of winters, staff at Bittersweet Ski Resort near Otsego are staying positive as they prepare to kick off a new season.

“There’s a lot of customers calling every day. We’re ready. They’re ready,” Nicholas Ross, general manager of Bittersweet, said.

Ross, who is entering his third season as GM, took over at a challenging time, to say the least.

“For me, it was taking over right at the bad part of climate change a little bit and we haven’t had the best winters… (It has) been a little bit of a struggle,” he told News 8.

Bittersweet got an early start last year, opening on Nov. 29, 2023, but was only able to stay open for two days before shutting down again until Jan. 6.

“Last year we were open right around 60 days. In a normal year, we’re anywhere from 100 to 110,” Ross explained.

The holidays are particularly important for resorts, which depend on the increase in business.

“Thanksgiving (is) not as important as some of the others, just because the weather’s kind of hit-or-miss at this time of the year, but Christmas, it’s always good to be open, especially the two weeks that the kids are normally off school,” Ross said.

Resorts took a hit last year, grappling with one of the warmest and least snowy winter months on record last December. Cannonsburg, a smaller ski resort near Belmont, didn’t open for the season until Jan. 18 and was only able to operate 43 days out of the season.

Both resorts host some events throughout the summer to bring in additional income, but Ross said Bittersweet was extremely limited with how much it was able to spend in the offseason, so a majority of the summer was spent cleaning up the resort, maintaining the chairs and doing a bit of additional light maintenance around the property.

Now, with snow and colder temperatures in the forecast, Ross said the team is ready. He added, however, that it takes more than a few inches of natural snow to jump-start the season.

“As soon as (riders) see snow on the ground, they’re ready to be out here and sometimes it takes us some man-made snow to actually get the place open. So I think the first three days that we have under 28 degrees or the first three nights, we’re going to go for it,” he said.

With 200 snow guns positioned on the slopes, Ross said Bittersweet can make a lot of snow quickly. The plan is to start making snow on Thanksgiving night and continue through the weekend, with the goal of opening Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. Of course, when resorts open, the goal is always to stay open, but that is ultimately up to Mother Nature.

“Those decisions (to shut down) are very hard. You never know what you’re going to get. The biggest thing is if you’re going to open, you want to make sure you got snow to last all day. You don’t want to have to shut down to push snow around and the biggest thing is making sure it’s safe,” Ross explained.

Despite the fickle last couple of winters, Ross is staying positive, with high hopes for the slopes.

“It’s a new year, so you never know what’s going to come in a new year,” he said. “Every year is different, so we just kind of got to embrace and go with whatever comes with it and make the best out of it.”