Snowstorms are expected to hit the Cascades near Bend this weekend, and Mt. Bachelor on Thursday announced plans to open a terrain park and the Nordic Center Monday, then more lifts Wednesday.

“We knew that people were chomping at the bit to get up here,” said Drew Jackson, marketing and communications manager at the ski area off Cascade Lakes Highway west of Bend.

Mt. Bachelor did a similar, limited-operations opening last year. Mt. Bachelor had 17 inches of snow near the base of its slopes Thursday, Jackson said.

Add a foot to 20 inches of snowfall, and it should have enough to open.

“And it looks like this weekend’s storm just might do that,” Jackson said.

The Sunshine Accelerator lift will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, according to a news release from Mt. Bachelor.

Single-day terrain park lift tickets will be $29 for adults ages 19 to 64 and $19 for all other ages. Season, midweek, 12-day and four-pack passes are also good for the terrain park.

The Nordic Center plans to have at least 5 kilometers of trails groomed and ready for cross-country skiing Monday.

Given enough snow, Mt. Bachelor is set to open three more lifts — Pine Marten, Skyliner and Sunrise — Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, Jackson said.

Last year Mt. Bachelor opened Nov. 23, as opposed to the possible Nov. 26 opening this year.

Despite low snowpack in some parts of the Cascades, Mt. Bachelor was open 182 days last year, Jackson said, which was right at the ski area’s average for ski seasons since 2000. It saw about 500,000 skier visits.

This week, Mt. Bachelor workers have been using what snow they have to prime the runs, even loading up snow cleared from the parking lot and piling it on the slopes. This month, when temperatures at the mountain were colder, the resort made snow, but the recent inversion put a temporary halt to it.

“It’s been a little too warm for us to make snow,” Jackson said.

During an inversion, temperatures at lower elevations, in Bend, are colder than at higher elevations, on the mountain. While people in Bend contended with freezing conditions early this week, high temperatures at the mountain were in the mid-40s.

Although the storm predicted for this weekend may drop 10 inches of snow at Hoodoo Ski Area, the snowfall will not be enough to open the ski area, which is off U.S. Highway 20 along Santiam Pass. Hoodoo officials had planned to open the day after Thanksgiving, but after looking at the forecast they decided to hold off, Daidre Streeter, Hoodoo office manager, said Thursday. Hoodoo does not have a targeted opening date.

“We just take it week by week at this point,” she said. Hoodoo had a base of about 7 inches of snow Thursday.

Last year, Hoodoo did not open until Feb. 7. The late start made for a short season, Streeter said. Hoodoo operated for 39 days last ski season. Normally it operates about 170 days. There were 14,000 Hoodoo skier visits last year, compared with the 75,000 skier visits the season before.

Good years have seen as many as 100,000 skier visits at Hoodoo.

“But last year was bad,” Streeter said. “Probably the worst ever.”

The hopes for snow at Mt. Bachelor and Hoodoo this weekend come from an approaching cold front off the Pacific Ocean. The front should move over the Central Oregon Cascades late today or early Saturday, Matthew Cullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland, said Thursday.

“The snow levels will be coming down,” he said. Snow is expected to fall Saturday and Sunday above 4,000 feet. Exactly how much Cullen was not sure, offering an estimate of “several inches.”

Runs at Mt. Bachelor are between 5,700 and 9,065 feet. Runs at Hoodoo are between 4,668 and 5,703 feet.

— Reporter: 541-617-7812,

ddarling@bendbulletin.com