My weekend at Whiteface March 4, 5th 2016

According to the ski Patrol, this Friday was the best conditions all season. I was there. On Saturday, I rode the lift with a lady who said this weekend was probably the best she had seen all season. I guess I picked the right time to go. When I arrived on Thursday, I went into town, and talked to a guy in High Peaks cyclery. He was quite negative, and said that there wasn't much open, and it would be very icy. He kinda killed my vibe.

I knew it wouldn't be too bad, because the guns were running. ORDA was also making snow at the jumping complex, and someone was making snow at the golf course to get ready for a winter fest this weekend. I love seeing snow being made, no matter the time of year. It's just awesome. Always. I heard that ORDA had to get permission from Cuomo to blow this weekend. Boy, he has a tough job.

We stayed at a nice house in Wilmington, with Whiteface in view, being less than 3 miles away. It was located in a subdivision of land, and there were still several available lots. I now know where to build my getaway home in the future!





It wasn't clear, but it was there.

Both Friday, and Saturday turned out to be powder days on certain trails. It was obvious that It had rained quite a bit, because there was grey ice under the snow. Whiteface did a nice job of grooming which made everything fun to ski. Lookout was closed, which didn't surprise me at all, but it was really eye opening as to just how bad this winter has been. All three trails up there  had snow blown last year at this time. Basically, this year, all that snow went elsewhere, and ultimately ended up in the Ausable. I was not upset, and I will not complain about it, because I understand what this game is all about more so than your average skier.

Whiteface did a fine job with the rest of the mountain which was more than I needed to have fun. Cloudspin would have been nice, but again, understandable on a year like this? anyone know if that trail has snowmaking?

The March snowmaking was definitely the highlight of my trip. It was like stepping back a month, or two.


There was no wind, and the temps were reasonable. not sure what they were exactly, but they were comfortable.


Dad getting off at the top. Got to have some respect for this hydrant. It's the highest snowmaking hydrant in the East, and Possibly the world, because I'm not sure places out west have summit snowmaking. You would not believe the stupidly huge amounts of energy it takes to get water up there, and still have 300+ PSI

 

I love the jumps at Whiteface. Somebody at Whiteface really nows how to build jumps. I love all varieties of skiing, including the park. What I love about Whiteface is that it delivers plenty of variety in terrain, and skiing styles.  Unfortunately I don't have any pics of the jumps, but I have GoPro footage which I will post a link to soon. In spite of a not so good winter, It sure felt like winter at The Face. I am a WhiteFace guy at heart.

Great pics , GREAT attitude and zeal for this sport and its operations

Study hard ,keep your attitude and work ethic and you young man will be a success if you choose to follow your dream in this business.

BTW Delhi is a good school had 2 friends there they each served as president while i was working at a sister school of the same type in the SUNY system. I worked with several colleagues from there on various system wide initiatives , so it is a good foundational education and prep .

Ethan Snow wrote

Whiteface did a fine job with the rest of the mountain which was more than I needed to have fun. Cloudspin would have been nice, but again, understandable on a year like this? anyone know if that trail has snowmaking?


Dad getting off at the top. Got to have some respect for this hydrant. It's the highest snowmaking hydrant in the East, and Possibly the world, because I'm not sure places out west have summit snowmaking. You would not believe the stupidly huge amounts of energy it takes to get water up there, and still have 300+ PSI

 

Cloudspin has plumbing, but to my knowledge it hasn't been used since Lookout was cut.

As for that hydrant being the highest in the east and world, both those statements are wrong.  Steamboat has snowmaking at 10,372
feet at the top of Storm Peak.  Some very southern mountains exist because they have elevation over 5,000 and they all have snowmaking.

Apart from that correction, great report.  Love how Whiteface's terrain expands up instead of out.  Best summit view in the east too.

Dude, Steamboat is not the East. That's in Colorado. So I'm going with this being the highest hydrant in the East.  But it really doesn't have so much to do with elevation as it has to do with vertical. Steamboat has a vertical drop of 3660, while WF has a drop of 3400. That's only 260' difference. So, I'd put WF IN the top 10 for most vert in th world.

Ps, all these photos were taken with my LG v10. That phone has a remarkable camera.  Now I'm sitting in the car going through my brothers Go Pro footage trying to pick out the best.  

You did say possibly the highest snowmaking hydrant in the world.  It's not as all Colorado base areas are higher than the Whiteface Summit.

Beech Mountain, NC has a top elevation over 5,000 feet which is higher than the WF Summit chair.  Not much vertical though.

Whiteface definitely isn't in the top 10 in the world for vertical.  Maybe in the country.  I'm sure most of the ski areas in the Alps put Whiteface's vertical to shame.

Ok, sorry. What I meant to say was vertical, not elevation. And I'm going back,in what I said about being the tallest in the world. Lets just say it's the highest in the East, and in the top 10 across North America. (vertically speaking)

The only point I was trying to make here is that it takes a lot of energy to get water up that mountain, and you have to have some respect for that. I ran some quick calculations as to just how much power it takes to pump that water.

With 3400 vert, if you want 300 PSI at the top, (necessary for most snowguns)  and you have a 10" water main, I came up with 2472 PSI at the base. That's basically a gas powered pressure washer right there.   But we need like 10,000 GPM, not 2 GPM. If WF has lines bigger than 10" then these numbers would be even bigger. I don't know all the details, it's just a rough guestimate. I came up with this based on the system at Plattekill with an elevation of 1100', knowing it takes 800 PSI at the bottom, and I wrote out a proportion. 1,100 is to 700 as 3400 is to X.

Then with those numbers we can calculate horse Power. GPM x PSI over 1460 (speed of an electric induction motor, and also the RPM of pump impeller) let's assume that they run about 50 guns at the summit, and each gun is flowing 50 GPM. It's just a guess, may be more. That puts us at 2500 GPM. So, I came up with 4310 HP to pump water from base to summit. Keep in mind that this does not and cannot happen all in one stage. There are booster pumps located mid-mountain. But the numbers won't change much.

For electricity, a 4310 HP motor consumes 3.2 million watts. One HP consumes 740 Watts of electricity. Divide 3.2 million by volts which is 480 and you get 6,650 amps.  Your main disconnect on your house is 200 amps. If you've never broken that main, then you've never used 200 amps. On a busy day, you,might use 100 amps, unless you are making snow like I am. Anyway, Thats one hefty electric bill, and it's all because you have to overcome so much elevation. Of we were making snow on a level surface it would be easy.

This does not include compressed air, but that consumes a lot of energy as well. I'm just  not as sure on the numbers. Besides, air is not affected very much by elevation change as it has little resistance and is very light, so, pressures at the bottom will be very close to pressures at the top. Transporting air is cake. Transporting water is extremely difficult.

It sure is that.  Love going top to bottom without stopping.

The gondola can run at a speed of 1,212 fpm which will get you to the top of Little Whiteface in only 7 minutes.  However I've never seen it go that fast, usually at about 1,000.  If it were to run full speed, you could get close to 10,000 vertical in an hour.

This is why you tend to see a lot of low-E guns running at the bottom of the mountain, and none up top. Low-e guns guns require very high water pressure, and were designed for this very reason. Mountains figure that they can capitalize on their very high water pressure on lower mountain, and use way less compressed air as a result. In other words low-e guns are not really low-e, they are just consuming energy differently by capitalizing on wasted energy. If you were to run a few low-e guns at say an XC ski center, you may find that you are not really saving that much because you still have to pump 800 PSI even if you have no vert. Low-e guns are basically just pressure washer wands with Tiny nucleation nozzles.  You may as well pump more air, and you only need maybe 150 psi on your water if your working on a level surface.

Those #s are staggering.  I assume with that kind of electrical demand they would have some pretty huge generators to power everything up?  

I guess it makes more of a difference with the largest vertical in the east.  A bunch of mountains use the HKD and Snowlogic tower guns near the top.  I wonder if it makes a difference to install ratnik tower guns like what Hunter uses on Lower K27 at the Whiteface Summit.  Increased hang time means more snow, less energy, and less grooming out of piles.

Ethan,

Good on you, great report.  We all need ski buddies, looks like you got quite the crew.  

Keep doing what you're doing.

Ski you on the Hill.

Yes, they certainly are huge numbers, but not completely unreasonable. Some places do have generators which prevents them from having to pay the demand charge on the startup which usually exceeds thousands of dollars. When fuel prices are high, it's not worth it, but when fuel is low like it is now, it is a good idea. So yes, it's a lot of energy, but no more than say a couple streets in NYC. I'm sure the town of Wilminton, and WF have been colaborating over the years to provide the electrical supply infrastructure. Most likely happened back during the Olympics. You can pull an awful lot of power off a telephone pole because of the high voltage, current is low. I bet back in the 70s when the Olympics came to town, they got plenty of state and federal funding for all the infrastructure.

Sno if WF put booster pump closer to the summit, they could run HKDs or SnowLogics up there. The reason they don't is because of the high winds. Stick guns don't work well in high winds. Although, Ratniks On say a 10' would help to increase eficiency. They should attach them,with hard hoses so,all you have to do is open the master valve, and the whole trail comes on. That would also save a lot of labor. They actually have those on Lies and Rumor at Gore. I think over time we will see stuff like this happen, but it's very expensive stuff, so it won't happen right away.

Thanks for a great trip report. Glad you didn't get discouraged and went. Looks like the snow was pretty good.

Brownski,

It was more than "pretty good" it was excellent. Some trails were pretty good, but others were excellent because of the fresh snowmaking.

It's a whole lot more efficient to run guns that are on towers.  The increased hang time means you can make more and better snow.

With ground guns, they can get choked really easy when they make enough snow to cover the nozzle.  You have to groom or move the guns to keep them running.  It takes a lot longer to choke up a 10 foot tower gun.

Say you're blowing Skyward, which is wide and takes a good amount of snow to cover.  If you're using ground guns, it'll take a lot of time to get it covered, since you'll have to shut down and groom multiple times.  I'd you had 10 foot tower guns, you might only have to groom once or twice to open it.

Sno, I agree with you that they should use towers. But, I don't think they groom while they are making snow. I know those ground guns can get choked easily, but usually the snowmakers just keep moving them and placing them on top of the piles they just made. When you first make that stuff it comes out very wet. You can't groom it until it sits for a day or two. I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, they don't shut down, they just have to keep moving guns. As I said, ORDA already did that on Lies, and Rumor, so I suspect they will do it to Skyward soon. It will increase efficiency, and labor, and time. And like I said, they should use hard hoses so that they can fire up the whole trail at once.

You two really should just move to where it snows more.

Someday, when I finish my education, I will. But for now, I like making it snow. It makes me feel empowered.