Australian Ski Area Prepares to Reopen Two Years After Fire, Pandemic

An Australian ski centre that was destroyed by a forest fire months before the coronavirus pandemic closed the other Australian ski areas for much of the past two winters anyway, is aiming to reopen for the upcoming winter 2022 after a full rebuild.

The Blyton Group which owns Selwyn Ski Area in Australia’s Victoria province committed to rebuilding the centre after catastrophic bushfires in January 2020 destroyed the resort’s buildings  and destroyed or badly damaged lifts.

“Despite various challenges with COVID lockdowns, record rainfalls and supply chain delays, work is well underway on our rebuild,” a statement from the centre explained.

The new Selwyn Centre base building will house an expanded ski and board hire operation, enhanced food and drink offerings and improved toilet amenities is nearing completion.

Doppelmayr Australia completed work on the rebuild of the New Chum chairlift at Selwyn Snow Resort last year.

The upgrade work undertaken on New Chum chairlift included replacement chairs, upgraded towers, a new Variable Speed Drive to control the lift speed to assist guests, as well as the expansion and upgrade of the Unload Platform.

Doppelmayr Australia also made required repairs to all other lifts and installed three brand new snow carpet lifts.

Climate scientists are warning that forest fires will be come increasingly common in the current climate emergency and the evidence of increasing numbers and extent of wildfires around the world appears to be backing this up, unfortunately. “Fire season,” once a summer phenomena, now goes year-round in North America.

Last summer fires in Western Canada and the USA narrowly missed several famous ski areas and Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort in California has been unable to open this last winter while fire damage there has been repaired.