With the National Weather Service predicting cold overnight conditions for the coming week, the resorts’ snowmaking operations teams turned on their snow guns last week.
By forcing water and pressurized air through a snow gun, snow is blown into big piles along designated trails and left to cure before the snowplows come in and level them to build a solid base of 18 inches to 2 feet of artificial snow that, with the help of natural snowfall, will last until next April.
The use of snowmaking machines has become more common as resorts around the world face climate change and changing weather patterns.
Park City Mountain turned on its snow guns early Thursday morning. Communications Manager Emily McDonald says the resort makes snow in those areas it plans to open on opening day, Friday, Nov. 17
“We started at Canyons Village up in the Red Pine Saddleback area, typically where we open on opening day and we’re actually blowing in both bases both at Canyon Village and in Mountain Village and then in the Payday and First Time area of the Mountain Village,” McDonald said.
Even though the daytime temperatures are forecast to be in the 50s in the coming week, McDonald says it’s not too early to start making snow.
“This is right in line with when we typically start making snow,” McDonald explained. “We've had several good days and nights to forecast temperatures.”
At Deer Valley, Vice President of Mountain Operations Steve Graff says they too turned on their snowmaking guns on Thursday and right now they’re focused on making snow on the lower mountain. Over the coming days, he says they’ll start to make snow on the upper mountain as well.
With more than a month before opening day (Saturday, Dec. 2), Graff says it’s time to make snow because the conditions are ripe.
“It's never too early,” Graff said. “And you know, while we don't have ideal temperatures 24 hours a day, typically, if we can get, you know, 12, 13, 14 hours at a time, we're going to take every hour we can get to ensure that we have a good product for opening.”
Ideally, he’d like to make snow 24 hours a day, but will keep the guns running as long as it makes sense to.
“Ideal conditions, and we're actually starting to run into some of those, is when you could run for 24 hours a day,” Graff explained. “And we call that ‘day shots.’ And those can be fairly rare at the end of October. But you don't want to let any of those go by because it's so much more efficient to make snow 24 hours a day. There's so much labor involved in getting out there and turning guns on one at a time. Especially now, when there's no snow cover. So, it all must be done on foot as opposed to snowmobile. The longer we can let those run the better off we're going to be.”
Woodward Park City also amped up its snowmaking operations. The indoor hub is open for business seven days a week, but there’s been no announcement on opening day for the outdoor activities.
A Pray for Snow event is planned for Friday, Nov. 3, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. with live music, food, drinks and games. Every ticket includes access to the Indoor Action Sports Hub featuring the trampolines, Mega Ramp, foam pits, and indoor pump track.
And tickets are also being sold for the Line Skis Movie Night on Saturday, Nov. 4, starting at 5:30 p.m.
