Snowmaking in an El Niño season

snoloco wrote

Hunter and Windham aren't even open yet and it isn't looking good for this weekend.  They may get open for the 19th.  I'm not even thinking about Mountain Creek yet.  I don't expect to ski there till I get back from Steamboat at least.   There may be a possibility of them not opening at all.

ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OPEN BY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I wish

Me too. F*** El Niño.

While not my favorite ski area in terms of terrain, Bruce Schmidt, the GM of Okemo has things totally right in when it comes to snowmaking.  From 3:10 to the end is my favorite quote.  "The resorts that put the snowmaking and the grooming in will shine when the weather is no good".  He was completely correct this year.  I believe they have the most acreage open in the east right now.  Other big snowmaking resorts like Hunter and Mount Snow did equally well.  Even Mountain Creek was able to get 100% open despite being in tropical NJ.

Yeah, but, it's still Mountain Creek.

snoloco wrote

While not my favorite ski area in terms of terrain, Bruce Schmidt, the GM of Okemo has things totally right in when it comes to snowmaking.  From 3:10 to the end is my favorite quote.  "The resorts that put the snowmaking and the grooming in will shine when the weather is no good".  He was completely correct this year.

Agree 100%. Stratton is similar to okemo with both terrain and snowmaking. I would bet their skier visits are holding up better than the average mountain, although i dont have any data. When the weather sucks, top notch snowmaking really shines.

tom

Yeah, but, it's still Okemo.

It's easy to cover flat non rocky trails.  That's all Okemo and Stratton have.

I found Tremblant's approach to snowmaking to be interesting.  They essentially blow non-stop until the mountain is 100% open. Then that's it.  This year the date was January 29.  What's different from what we're used to is that touch-ups and re-surfacing isn't part of their plan.

Tremblant's snowmaking plant can cover a football field 75 feet deep in 24 hours.  That equates to 100 acre-feet per day (by comparison Gore and WF are around 30 acre-feet per day).  SnoLoco would like Tremblant: one of their stated objectives is to have all lifts operating by the Christmas holiday period.

Covering Mount Tremblant in snow, a sizable challenge

Pretty cool.

No resurfacing?

Harvey wrote

No resurfacing?

Once a trail's been blown, grooming and natural snow keep it resurfaced.  One of the luxuries of latitude is fewer thaws. This year at Gore, Sunway and Showcase have basically been continuously resurfaced.  Nov and Dec were mild up at Tremblant this year too, but they were still at 100% and done with snowmaking by the end of Jan.

The article you link also atates:

"The thickness of the base layer in the trails is the main factor that determines the end of our snowmaking period."

How was the runout at Tremblant, Jeff? Someone just  mentioned to me this past weekend that it is fairly long...

Marcski wrote

How was the runout at Tremblant, Jeff? Someone just  mentioned to me this past weekend that it is fairly long...

I think I mentioned in my Tremblant TR that the runout on the north side (Versant Nord) can be long, but that can be pretty easily avoided by sticking to the Expo HSQ (black, double-black and some blue terrain), the Edge chair (fixed grip quad, a single black trail and a lot of gladed acreage), or the Lowell Thomas chair (also fixed grip, serves the top 1000 vert of the north, so a mix of blue and black).  Long runout isn't an issue on the south side (Versant Sud) of the mountain.

That is how western ski areas do it and since they are owned by interwest it makes sense.  I think Stratton also is owned by them.

Note to Sno that the 100% date Jeff mentions is end of Jan not Christmas as is his irrational demand

I never said 100% terrain by Christmas.  I said all lifts by Christmas.  That's not an unreasonable demand.  One of the most crowded times of the year, so you'd better have every single lift running to handle the crowds.

I can add Tremblant to the list of ski areas that follow my perfect model.  All lifts by Christmas, no excuses, no exceptions.  If it can possibly be done, it will get done.  No "we're waiting for mother nature to provide us the goods" BS.

This year it seemed that gore used a lot of ground guns even on trails with newer more efficient tower guns. The fan guns were also used a lot. I assume there is a reason but dont know what it is (maybe it is my perception). I also saw some snowmaking with temps at or above 30 degrees, mostly with fan guns at the base.

tom

TomCat wrote

This year it seemed that gore used a lot of ground guns even on trails with newer more efficient tower guns. The fan guns were also used a lot. I assume there is a reason.

Volume - the old Ratniks will crank out more snow. If you need base in a hurry, don't go low E.

The HKD towers that Hunter uses crank out snow like nobody's business.  They also make good snow in all temperatures.  The ratniks get clogged if they run too long and then they have to move the gun or groom.  Hunter has really stood out this year compared to their competitors.  

Coach Z wrote

Note to Sno that the 100% date Jeff mentions is end of Jan not Christmas as is his irrational demand

Just to clarify, they shoot to have all LIFTS running for the Christmas holidays.  End of Jan is when they hit 100% TRAIL COUNT this year.  Two different benchmarks.

Windham isn't done yet.  If they blow more snow, I'm pretty sure Hunter will react.