FINDING GREEN IN AN EARLY BLANKET OF WHITE
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
For outdoor enthusiasts, the traditional way of working off the overindulgence of Thanksgiving is to pound the pavement with some hard jogs and runs in the days that follow. This year, however, brought an uncommon option for area residents—skiing.
Seizing on cooler than normal temperatures in the weeks preceding Thanksgiving, the Catamount Ski Area was able to produce thick blanket of snow on many trails and opened for the 2008-09 season on November 28—its earliest opening in a decade and one of its earliest openings ever. |
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“In years past, we have opened only a few times in November. What made this so pleasant was we had a nice turnout, with all of the things that take people’s time on Thanksgiving weekend,” said Catamount General Manager Bill Gilbert.
“We typically open between [December] 7th and 15th," he said, "but we have had years where we were happy to be open by Christmas,” said Gilbert.
Snowmaking operations kicked into high gear on November 19 and continued through most of the days leading up to Thanksgiving. For the opening on Friday, nine trails and four lifts were operational with eight to twenty inches of snow covering trails all the way to the summit.
More than a thousand skiers took advantage of the early opening, finding trails generally in good shape with little ice and no “brown spots’ on Friday or Saturday. By mid-day on Saturday, the parking lot was half-full and the nine trails open were being tested by numerous skiers of all ages.
“I only ski every two or three years, but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to get out this early in the season,” said skier James Slater of New York City, as he rented equipment Saturday morning.
The resort—which is closed Monday through Friday of this week—will reopen on Saturday, and, weather pending, Gilbert said, snowmaking will begin again on Thursday. “That will allow us to clean up what we’ve got open and start to expand,” he said.
Snowmaking Goes Green
With Mother Nature being conservative in her own snowmaking this year, Catamount has had to work to make every inch of snow it has created. The process of making snow can be very expensive with a heavy reliance on electricity to power the snow guns that stand as sentries along the mountain’s trails.
Gilbert said Catamount is trying a new process for snowmaking this year which uses less compressed air and consequently less energy. The early results, he said, have been “fantastic,” and snowmakers are expected to expand the new system to all of Catamount’s snow guns.
“We modified 100 of our electric guns this year to the point where we use a quarter of the energy that we used in the past for the air compressors,” Gilbert said. “We have seen that it worked real well, and now we are going to expand that to the remainder of our 330 snow guns.”
The general manager noted that the ski area used 3,000 cubic feet of compressed air for the 100 modified guns in the days preceding its opening this year, compared with 7,100 cubic feet used during the same period of time last year.
‘That’s a big savings,” Gilbert said.
Troy Hawks of the National Ski Areas Association, a Colorado-based trade association for ski area operators said, said reducing energy consumption is a trend that “has swept through the industry” in recent years. “It’s something we are seeing more and more ski areas take part in. . . . It not only reduces energy consumption and saves money, but it reduces the amount of time it takes to get open, and that’s crucial, because you want to get going as soon as the first cold weather wave hits,” said Hawks.
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