This story by Aaron Calvin was first published by the Stowe Reporter on Jan. 11.
The big warmup and rainstorm in late December that flooded the valleys also melted a good chunk of the snow cover that Stowe Mountain Resort and Smugglers’ Notch Resort spent the month before building up.
Stowe lost nearly 10 inches of snow as measured by its stake on Mt. Mansfield almost overnight, and Smugglers’ lost 120 acres of foot-deep snow in late December, according to resort officials.
The warmth and rain, with temperatures rising well above freezing before crashing back down again only to rise again the next week, illustrate the extremely variable winter weather that seems to have become, increasingly, winter’s hallmark in the Northeast.
It’s also a future that the ski industry has largely foreseen, with resorts across the country and Vermont maximizing strategies for skiers and snowboarders to be able to get on the slopes regardless of fluctuating weather.
That has primarily meant investing in snowmaking. Not just making more powder, but also fine-tuning where, when and how snowmaking machines are deployed, and how the snow gets moved around after it’s made.
With erratic temperatures and levels of precipitation, the challenge for Vermont’s snowmakers is to respond with the quick fluctuations, making snow when and where it’s possible.
“What we have seen, and I will say what’s changed probably in the last seven years, are the weather patterns,” said Scott Reeves, Stowe’s director of mountain operations. “We’re starting to see diminishing opportunities to make snow. However, when we have them, it’s really important that we can get the system up and running quickly, and max out our system as quickly as possible and get as many guns on so that we don’t miss any opportunities.”
Mark Delaney, head of operations at Smugglers’ Notch, echoed those sentiments.
“What we’re finding in terms of snowmaking is that you have to be prepared to give it everything you’ve got for shorter periods of time. Sometimes we’re just dealing with one- or two-day runs, so when you know that those temperatures are going to come in and that you can effectively make snow you’ve got to be geared up and give it everything you can during that window of opportunity.”
Capacity and strategy
When Reeves arrived at Stowe in 2007, already well-tenured in the ski industry, he found a fleet composed mostly of land frames, hulking cannon-shaped pieces that had to be moved from trail to trail for maximum impact.
Prior to the resort’s acquisition by multinational megacorporation Vail Resorts, Stowe invested over $10 million in upgrading its fleet with new tower guns, those lithe spindles that spew out the white stuff in rapid-fire fashion.
Since the 2017 acquisition, the resort has continued to invest in upgrading its snowmaking technology. It has moved away from diesel-powered guns and is now all-electric with automated fan domes that are temperature reactive.
When temperatures are in the low teens and optimal for snowmaking, Stowe can get up to 140 guns running at once. The trick is riding the temperature fluctuations for the most efficient deployment of resources.
“You have to think of a snowmaking system like a train. It takes a while to get up to speed and then, once it gets up to speed, it takes a while to slow it down,” Reeves said. “It’s that getting up to speed and slowing down where you’re really wasting production time, unfortunately.”
At Smugglers’ Notch, it’s a different story, but the general strategy and the overall goal is fairly similar. An array of guns — towers, some mounted and others on sleds, a dozen or so land frames in the areas too tight for towers and mounted and portable fans for open areas — power the resort’s snowmaking.
But just as important as the equipment is the deployment of the snowmakers, who are still moving the guns and hoses around the slopes. The tightening of snowmaking windows demands flexibility and has led Delaney to adjust snowmakers’ shifts to the demands of the weather.
Smugglers’ is looking to increase its snowmaking capacity to ensure skiable slopes as the winters become more unpredictable, but it’s an incremental process. Right now, the resort can produce 3,000 gallons of snow per minute in optimal conditions and would like to work its way up to 5,000.
To illustrate the difference in capabilities, Delaney estimated that Stowe can produce around 10,000 gallons per minute, but the narrow trails featured at Smugglers’ Notch don’t require quite that much production, he said.
To make snow, water is required, so to increase snowmaking capacity Delaney and Smugglers’ must find ways to expand their access to naturally occurring water sources, which requires negotiations with the state.
Delaney hopes to invest in equipment upgrades and eventually bring in the kind of automated snowmaking technology Stowe has already begun to implement, but privately owned Smugglers’ Notch must prioritize its upgrades and increasing production is the first step.
Meanwhile, Vail and Stowe see increased automation and climate responsive technology as the next frontier.
“We’re going to continue to look at expanding technology,” Reeves said. “Certainly, automation is a key strategy that we’re going to continue to embrace and enhance, because the more that we can do with a click of a mouse, and instantaneously get guns on, the quicker that we’re going to take advantage of those window opportunities that we have.”
There are other factors that nearly all major ski resorts in Vermont must contend with. Aging infrastructure — the deteriorating pipes that run reserves of water to the snowmakers — are a tax continuously coming due. The growing expense, volatility and complexity of the energy required to run snowmaking operations is its own cost.
Both Reeves and Delaney lean on their veteran snowmaking crews in their quest to adapt.
“They know the mountain, they understand it, and the majority of them ski or ride, which they take a lot of pride in,” Reeves said. “Not only are they producing the product, but they’re also sampling the product. It’s really great to have a team that does that.”
Both operations directors themselves have decades in the business under their belts, and Delaney enjoys the support of mountain operations director Mike McAdoo and snowmaking manager Justin Hoelke, both of whom are long tenured employees at Smuggs.
Elevated grooming
Once snow is made, it must be efficiently redistributed, an exercise that has grown increasingly sophisticated as resorts rely on artificial snow for greater trail coverage.
Both Stowe and Smugglers’ use winch cats — cable-stabilized all-terrain vehicles — that have allowed for better grooming on steeper slopes, but there’s a new level of precision and technology that helps resorts move snow.
For example, Smugglers’ employs GPS-enabled technology that provides a real-time read out of snow depth levels and allows them to move exact amounts of the snow produced by snow guns to the areas that need it most.
“That allows (Hoelke) to manage that snow so that you know you have a reasonable depth of snow over critical areas, so you don’t have bare spots starting to appear, and it allows us to better understand how to distribute the snow over the course of a trail,” Delaney said.
Moving snow has become even more essential as elevation has played an increasing role in whether the precipitation that falls on resort mountains arrives as rain or snow or something in between.
A warming world means a wetter Vermont, but at higher elevations, that precipitation still translates to snow.
At Stowe, where snow can be produced across the face of Vermont’s highest mountain, it’s about strategically fortifying the base as temperatures allow, but elevation has increasingly factored into Smugglers’ snow-moving strategy as well.
“You can’t treat the mouth as uniformly as a whole,” Delaney said. “We can have three different gradations. Up top, you may have fairly dry, cold snow; the middle of the mountain can be kind of a transition zone; down (at the base) it can be pretty wet and mushy a lot of times, so you have to vary your grooming techniques based on elevation.”
Future snow
Few resorts in Vermont are feeling the excruciating realities of winter in a warming world like Mad River Glen.
The ski area, which just celebrated its 75th anniversary, was founded by Roland Palmedo in 1948, who also pioneered skiing at Stowe but decamped for a site where a more serious sensibility could be cultivated around the sport.
The Glen, which has a cooperative ownership structure, has remained committed to a skiers-only, naturally produced snowscape. Conditions were great in early December, but the big melt reduced the skiable area to just the racing hill and the beginner’s chairlift.
By design, Mad River Glen has just nine guns making snow, fed by a small brook. Cognizant of the climatic changes underway, general manager Matthew Lillard said that the ski area has increased efficiencies through grooming and operations, but there are real limitations on what can be done.
“We try to find ways to continue skiing, and in a changing winter, generally speaking, I still think there’s snow in front of us for many years,” he said. “Winters are generally getting it a little bit later, and there’s more ups and downs in the weather. We’re working on how we groom, being more aggressive with moving snow around and storing it in certain spots.”
The cooperative’s bylaws forbid snow production above a certain elevation, where natural snow has, in the past, been essentially guaranteed, but there’s a growing sense among its members that perhaps some changes need to be made.
“It’s a fine balance between holding on to the past and holding on to that natural-snow-only skiing and that natural state, but also being able to deal with the ups and downs of winter,” Lillard said. “There’s certainly a big contingent here that still hates man-made snow, and they’re willing to wait it out for the natural stuff, but there is, I think, a changing attitude that we do need to make some snow, we do need to prepare ourselves for the changing winter.”
Eric DesLauriers — whose family took over Bolton Valley Resort in 2017 after his father, Ralph, who founded the resort in the 1960s and was forced to sell it in the 1990s — believes unequivocally that greater investment in snowmaking is the key to the survival of his heritage ski area.
Just in the last year, DesLauriers said Bolton has increased its snowmaking capacity by 30%.
“Snowmaking is obviously critical to successful operation of a ski area these days,” he said. “If we hadn’t been relying on natural snow with no snowmaking, we would have been closed most of December, probably not open right now. We’ve had snowmaking since the early 1970s, when my dad was still running in place. Over time it’s become a critical element of any successful ski area.”
Whether a ski area is family-owned, privately held, corporate or a cooperative, there is a growing consensus that that the strategic production of artificial snow and increased investment in its production through automated technology will be crucial to not just the success of ski resorts as a business, but the availability of consistent skiing as a sport and a pastime.
“We’re in the skiing business, so we’re optimists right from the get-go,” said Smugglers’ Delaney. “The thing about man-made snow is, it’s got a higher moisture content than natural snow, so it’s a lot more durable. It holds up, it lasts longer. The last stuff to melt off the mountain in the spring is always the man-made snow trails.
“To the extent that you are able to configure your operation to be able to respond rapidly during the periods when you do have appropriate temperatures, in a reasonably robust volume, scaled to the size of your ski area — there’s reason to believe that skiing and riding will be with us for a few decades to come, at least.”
Disclosure: Aaron Calvin’s partner works at Smugglers’ Notch Resort.
