Caroline Carlson | Daily Press City of Gladstone Parks and Recreation employee Robert Brown adjusts one of the two snow machines at the Gladstone Ski Hill.

Caroline Carlson | Daily Press
Henry Hanson of Gladstone hits the slopes on his snowboard at the Gladstone Ski Hill recently.

GLADSTONE — The Gladstone Ski Hill will open for tubing on January 9, offering two three-hour sessions. The first session will be from 12 to 3 p.m., the second session from 3 to 6 p.m. Gladstone Recreation Director Jason Davis said since the sessions have set end times, those wishing to go tubing for a full three hours will have to arrive by the start of the session they want a ticket for.

Selling sessions helps reduce congestion on the hill, said Davis. “Just because it gets so crowded, you know, we’ve got 300 people, 400 people up here on a weekend,” he added.

Davis said that if there are more than 100 people in a tubing session, they run it similarly to a water park, with tubers handing off their tubes to attendants at the bottom of the hill.

Due to the many unknowns with ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, the lodge is not offering season passes this year. Nor will it offer an after school program, which would necessitate schools busing in groups of kids, many of whom hang out inside the lodge doing homework and socializing before hitting the ski hill. Limited concessions such as hot cocoa, cappuccino and coffee will be available, but the focus will be on being outdoors and tubing.

The tubing hill is on the north side of the ski hill, with three runs, a warming hut and a fire pit. The runs include a bunny hill, a pony hill with a terrain park for more experienced snowboarders and skiers, and a center run that incorporates a half-pipe. When the tubing hill is open there is a motorized tubing lift monitored by attendants. As always, when not open for tubing, the he hill is available to those who want to go sledding or snowboarding on their own.

As soon as the snow falls, people think outdoor recreation, tubing, and other winter activities, Davis said, noting even though this year the snow came later than usual, it has sparked the usual level of interest.

“We’ve been getting a lot of phone calls, a lot of interest, people on the Facebook page, there’s a lot of people looking to get outside and have some fun this winter,” he said.

To ensure enough powder in this warmer-than-usual winter weather, two snow machines are at work on the hill. They will be making snow for the entire week, wrapping up on Monday. Davis said the recreation department held off on making snow until now because there were a lot of unknowns with such a fluid situation and so many health department regulations and restrictions.

“It’s one of those things, like, they don’t know what’s going on, so they can’t tell us what’s going on, but it’s our responsibility to know what’s going on, so I’m not going to pretend it’s not frustrating,” he said.

While Davis says the opening is still tentative, at this point it is set for the 9th, and he’s hoping to move forward.