Mount Sima will hopefully be up and running by Friday, according to the president of the Great Northern Ski Society.

Ernie Berken said the delay for the 2007-08 downhill ski season has been a result of warmer temperatures and a lack of natural snowfall.

The opening date for Mount Sima varies every year, but the ski hills' goal is to start their snowmaking in November, so they can be open earlier on in December, leading up to the Christmas break. So far the delay has cost the ski hill as much as $40,000.

'It is always critical for us to try and be open for Christmas,' Berken said. 'We make a lot of revenues here because we are open sometimes 18 days in a row if weather conditions are good, so that brings in a lot of revenue for us. As well as any other ski hill in the industry Christmas is a critical time for them because there are so many days of strong revenue coming in.'

Snowmaking at Mount Sima began in latter part of November, but unseasonably warm at first and having to shut down the pump later on, during the year's first cold snap for repairs limited the amount of progress that the team could make.

The Christmas season is one of the most profitable times of the year for Mount Sima. The hill usually remains open during the entire school break, with the exception of Christmas and would only close if the temperature dropped to -25 C or more, including the wind-chill.

On a good day this time of year, the ski hill could bring in as much as $4,000 during this period. Outside of the school holidays, Mount Sima is only open four days a week, from Thursday to Sunday.

There won't be any compensation for season ticket holders, but skiers always have the option of paying an extra $15 premium, which would entitle them to have their money refunded if an unusual event that prevented them from skiing on the hill occurred.

This isn't the first time Mount Sima has had to delay opening the hill. Less than 10 years ago, the same problem of a combination of a lack of snow as well as warmer weather occurred. The ski hill's snowmaking system was in place, but it wasn't cold enough to be used effectively. By the time it did get cold at the end of December the snowmaking team had lost the option of making snow because frost had penetrated into the ground, which created the risk of freezing the pipes needed for this process. Mount Sima ended up having to wait until the end of February to open that year and could only do so after enough natural snow had fallen.

This past summer, Mount Sima fixed the issue of their pipes freezing up, but the heavy machinery needed to be used to solve the problem created ruts on the hill, which created more work for the team to deal with this season.

Despite the initial bad luck, Berken is pretty confident about opening on Friday.

'We do have snowmaking capability on so many runs, but not all runs,' he said. 'Right now we are focusing more on trying to make enough snow for around the T-bar and get that open first because if we don't get any more natural snow at least we will have that opened to the public and we can do so safely. We want to make some more snow, get it in place where we need it and then when everything is in place we'll be off in running.'

The T-bar is an intermediate lift, which can cover about two-thirds of the ski hill.

Berken said the concern is not enough snow has fallen to safely cover up some of the rocks that were left on the hill after the construction work.

'If we don't have that much snow on the runs and our snow groomer is hitting rocks or people with their new snowboard or ski's are hitting rocks, they just don't come away with a good feeling about their day and the worst case scenario is somebody gets tripped up on a rock and hurts themselves,' he said. 'Once we get enough snow in place and pushed around and groomed out then we have a look and see what the condition is and if it looks good to go then we will open up.'

He said it is difficult to make snow in the warmer temperatures.

'We have to be selective about the temperatures we are going to work in and we have to know in the forecast whether we are going to have enough cold weather for a number of days,' Berken said. 'If we get one cold night and then it warms up during the day, the next day and remains warmer for the next few days after that we won't bother to make snow because it is just not worth getting it started if you have to shut it down again.'

The temperature has to be -10 C or colder for the hill to be able to successfully use the snow sticks, which are basically an aluminum pipe with a fire hose attached to it. The pipe is raised up into the air and it has four sprinkler heads on the top that spray out water.

Mount Sima also has the option of using fan guns for the snowmaking process, but this requires electricity, which costs more money and the ski hill has only so much funds in their budget for the snow creating process.

General information and updates can be found on www.mountsima.com or by calling the snowline at 667-SKIS.