Dry Hill owners reflect on their first season

WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) - No one has skied on the Dry Hill Ski Area slopes for a couple of days now.

Owners Patrick and Boo Jareo say they miss the action already.

“There’s always a little bit of chaos up here, and it’s really fun,” Boo Jareo said, “so I’ll miss that. I’ll miss the group of 11- to 14-year-olds that can be very naughty, but also adorable.”

The owners say although snow was a challenge this winter, their first season was a success.

“You know it’s funny when you have about 11 and a half feet of natural snow before the first of the year, and by the second we weren’t skiing on it because we didn’t have enough,” Patrick Jareo said. “But the temperature dropped enough so that we could make some snow.”

From there on, there were people shredding the slopes from January until this past Sunday.

Some were first timers on skis, smaller than others, as part of Dry Hill’s teaching program.

“it’s just absolutely wonderful,” Patrick Jareo said. “I’ll sit out there and just watch the little guys for hours, it’s incredible. That’s what we are. We are a teaching hill.”

Also seeing more school ski clubs is a goal the Jareros had at the start of the season, which they say they were able to see happen.

As for managing a new business, “we didn’t know what to expect,” Boo Jareo said. “Really, our staff knows more, knew more about the daily operations of this business a lot more than we did, so we trusted them to guide us, and they did. "

The Jareos say they had a great first season and are looking forward to many more to come.

“We’d like to say, ‘thank you’ to the community for being so incredibly supportive,” Boo Jareo said, “and to our staff, team members for helping us through, and without them none of this would have been as great as it is.”