The Big Snow indoor snow centre in New Jersey has re-opened after eight-months of closure following fire damage last September.

“We are excited to reopen Big SNOW to guests this Memorial Day Weekend,” said Trish McLeod, Director of Resorts Marketing & Sales, SNOW Partners. “We thank our visitors and team for their patience as we’ve worked diligently to resume the full operation of the facility. We are appreciative of all the hard work that has gone towards this reopening and look forward to welcoming guests back to our slope where we offer endless winter fun right here in New Jersey.”

The blaze, which happened in the middle of the night, it believed to have been caused by an electrical fault. The damage initially seemed minor, from the impression given by the centre that reopening could be quite quick, although pictures showed flames emerging from a crack in the roof.

In the event closure lasted through the autumn, winter and much of spring, the delays blamed on the process of dealing with insurance companies and sourcing specialist parts.

Big SNOW has had a troubled history although appears highly successful when able to operate. It was originally completed in 2008 but lay unused for more than a decade due to delayed in completing the surrounding huge mall complex resulting from the worldwide economic crash of that year. During its long closure period its roof was damaged at by weight of natural snow build up one winter.

It finally opened in December 2019 but was closed three months later by the global pandemic. It the operated sporadically as permitted through the pandemic before the fire closure.

The 2022 ski season is due to get underway in the southern hemisphere in the first few weeks of June sand for the first time since 2019 it’s looking a little more like a normal one …in terms of ease of access to the slopes, rules in resort and limits on the numbers of people on the slopes.

Closer to normal but not yet quite back to normal.  While Brits and some other nationalities can now travel to New Zealand if they meet all the criteria, for example, the country is not yet letting in citizens of all countries. For Lesotho, home of Afriski, it’s a similar story with a PCR test required for unvaccinated arrivals aged over one year old.