Pleasant Mountain staff forming the initials of the resort during the climactic light parade in 2023. Contributed / Pleasant Mountain

Pleasant Mountain Ski Resort celebrated the beginning of the 2024-25 ski season with its annual Winter Festival on Friday, Dec. 27.

According to Rachael Wilkinson, director of skier experience at Pleasant Mountain, the Winter Festival has been running for about two decades, and is based around a fireworks display and torchlight parade that take place at 8:30 p.m.

“The whole thing is a kickoff to (the resort’s winter season),” said Wilkinson, describing the importance of the festival in Pleasant Mountain’s calendar.

The highlight of the event was the torchlight parade. Ski instructors and other mountain staff members carried torches down the mountain in a “shining, blazing light of color,” coordinated into formations such as the resort’s initials, P and M. Wilkinson explained that many of the parade’s participants had done the event year after year, but the main qualification for the event was that one had to be a good skier, so if they got a newcomer, they could easily slot right into the parade.

This year, the Winter Festival coincided with the opening of the Summit Express, a new ski lift meant to boost speed and capacity on the mountain, which was celebrated by a ribbon-cutting ceremony the following morning. According to Pleasant Mountain’s website, the Summit Express, a high-speed detachable quad, cuts the ride time to the top of the mountain in half, to just 4.5 minutes. Wilkinson told the Lakes Region Weekly that the capacity would also be significantly larger than the previous lift’s, increasing from 1,800 skiers per hour to approximately 3,000.

The festival took place just two days after Christmas, during the height of one of the resort’s biggest ski weeks. Because of this, Wilkinson told the Lakes Region Weekly ahead of the event that they were expecting a strong turnout of around 3,000 people. Most attendees, she said, would be watching the parade from the base area, with some also watching from the more distant causeway on Moose Pond.