An early snowstorm helped Heavenly Valley open earlier than expected this year. Photo © Dipalipix | Dreamstime.com
A mid-November snowstorm has some western ski resorts opening earlier than expected this season. About nine inches of new snow fell in less than a week at Heavenly Mountain Resort in the Lake Tahoe region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, prompting operators to move opening day from Nov. 22 to Nov. 20. And Palisades Tahoe was expected to open five days earlier, on Nov. 22.
“We couldn’t be more stoked,” Patrick Lacey, public relations manager at Palisades Tahoe, told KCRA.com. “I mean, this is our 75th anniversary this year. So, I mean, Mother Nature’s providing.”
Both resorts still relied on snowmaking operations to help ready slopes for the season, but at least they also will have some of the real stuff for skiers and snowboarders. That likely won’t be the case for ski resorts in other regions of the country.
“All we need is a good cold snap,” Jon Spaulding, marketing director at Greek Peak Mountain Resort in Cortland, N.Y., told Syracuse’s WSYR-TV. “Two or three days in the 20s, and our guys will make so much snow.”
According to the television station, the resort has invested more than $4 million during the first four years of a five-year snowmaking infrastructure plan — which has been put to the test in recent years, with less than 100 inches of real snow falling each season since 2018-19.
“Just the record low snowfall totals we’ve been seeing, the trends we’re seeing. We had to do something to remain competitive and upgrade our technology,” Spaulding said. “Last year we had a record low natural snowfall total here, and we put together 111 ski days for our guests. Which was actually 4 more days than the year before! So without the snowmaking investments, I don’t know where we would be.”
The story is similar in the Midwest and New England, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts above-average temperatures this winter.
No wonder all-weather snowmaking technology is gaining a flurry of attention these days. Perfect North Slopes in Lawrenceburg, Ind., recently tested the capabilities of a Latitude 90 snowmaking system, which reportedly can generate snow in temperatures as warm as 77 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The technology utilized by these machines isn’t new,” notes Ski Area Management, dubbed “The Voice of the Mountain Resort Industry.” “For decades, similar refrigeration systems have been used to cool mines, flash-freeze fish, keep concrete cool and for commercial air conditioning. Today’s all-weather snowmaking machines use various iterations of this technology, implementing the same compressors and condensers you’d find being used to cool the refrigeration aisle at the grocery store. Some systems utilize a barrel in which water is frozen on the interior wall before being scraped off and blown out as snow, while others use a plate system where water droplets are frozen on plates and then shaken out onto a conveyor belt, which transfers the ice to an auger to be ground into finer particles. Others yet use a hybrid technology that allows the machines to operate as more traditional fan systems when temperatures allow.”
“For us, it’s really about using these new machines to reach our feeder markets to grow the industry,” Mark Adams, president of Ober Mountain in Gatlinburg, Tenn., told Ski Area Management after adding six Latitude 90 machines to its four existing snowmaking machines. “We’re utilizing these machines to advertise to our markets like Nashville, Birmingham, Chattanooga, and Huntsville — to get some of those folks interested in skiing, snowboarding and winter activities.”
Indeed, smaller ski areas that can afford the all-weather technology are reaping the benefits of being able to open the season on time regardless of weather while also building buzz.
As Thanksgiving approached, the buzz was getting louder at Killington Ski Resort in Rutland County, Vt., where female ski racers from 21 countries — including the USA’s Mikaela Shiffrin, the most-decorated skier of all time — were expected to descend Nov. 29-Dec. 1 for the Stifel Killington Cup. The stop on the Audi FIS Ski World Cup Tour is expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators, and resort officials were hoping temps would drop enough to fire up some of its new snow guns from snowmaking manufacturer HKD to blanket the race trail with at least four feet of snow.
Killington invested $7 million in the guns this year, which also will lead to a reduction in electricity usage, diesel fuel and labor, according to the New England Snow Journal.
“This is the most transformative snowmaking project since Killington expanded over to Bear Mountain in the late ’70s,” Killington snowmaking manager Greg Gleason said in a statement. “It’s great to see the resort investing in low-energy snow guns. Not only will it save on costs, but it will also allow us to expand terrain at a much faster rate in the early season, while still providing a quality product to our guests.”
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