Gore Behind the Scenes Snowmaking- Echo

I got the chance to head up with the snowmakers Saturday evening at Gore. My excuse was to film for a school project, but I really just wanted to be snowmaking. I went over to snowmaking HQ behind the poma and took a snowmobile to the pump house at the top of the north quad. We discussed logistics on how to get the six snowmakers around on 2 trails with only 2 snowmobiles. After a thorough discussion, I headed up with the head night-shift snowmaker, Wade. Wade and I went up to the top of the Burnt Ridge lift along with another snowmaker. We then headed over to Echo on foot. The flats on Echo looked like a pod of whales had surfaced. There where big whales all over the place. So we shut down every other gun. Those guns would be pulled down to "Cedars" later that night. We made our way down the upper section of Echo repositioning the guns. It is incredible how fast the snowmakers work, and the work isn't easy. To put it in perspective, imagine dragging a garbage can full of bricks uphill, in the dark, when its 3 degrees out, with 10 little kids all spraying garden hoses in your face, all in the middle of a NASCAR track. From there, we headed down to the flats of Echo, where the tower guns are. Because it was going to get so cold, we applied a special method of using the guns. These tower guns work incredibly well when running at 100% in extremely cold temperatures. However, the system can't handle every hydrant running at 100% all the way down Echo AND Twister. SO, we shut down every other tower gun, and got every other tower gun running at 100%. By this time it was pitch black. The dark really adds a whole other dimension to snowmaking, so the night shift really has it at least 2 times harder than the day shift. The only light source is a LED headlamp and the occasional full moon. By the time we got down to the bottom of Echo it was 6, we spent about 1 hour and 45 minutes on Echo, which is remarkable if you think about it.

Here are some pictures I snapped of the Sunset Snowmaking, along with a few shots of the High Peaks at sunset.

Stay tuned for a video!

4E... these are some REALLY nice shots!



Probably some awesome snow at 5 below zero too.

Hey ... I wasn't aware that Cedars had plumbing?  Is that new or am I forgetting?

Harv,
Cedars does have plumbing, guns were fired up all the way down to the BRQ first thing this morning. Expect all of Burnt Ridge including Sagamore by next weekend, according to Mtn. Mgmt.