I suppose I'll just give you guys the rundown on everything I pretty much know about making snow and what I tell while training new members of the Team! Like I said before.. My reason for coming back to PASR is to set things straight and to inform you guys, and perhaps give everyone here a little moreknowledge about making snow. Now, This is my third year, I feel like it would take 10+ years to truly have 95% of the process down pat and that's if you're working the same resort! I've never researched any other local systems so please excuse my ignorance in that respect.
I also ask that you guys please be respectful after you read this because I don't want a relapse of my history of defensive outbursts, I've been typing this up for over two hours as of now (I'm proof reading and about to click post) I have nothing to really gain from this and I recall making a promise I'd never come back here to a very important person at the resort and I may get some backlash.. In fact, it would be pretty nice if an Admin locked and sealed this thread after this. unfortunately, This has pretty much made montages history on PASR as the largest thread since before 2008. Sara did have one thing correct, they do watch this site and I wouldn't be surprised If I receive a text within the next 24 hours about this. So don't be afraid to post trail reports! if trails are icy, we'll see it, and try to dig deeper with the cats or we'll know we need to dust that particular trail if possible that night. You may have heard many times over the years that the mountain was built on the wrong side due to the sun. Well I do a lot of hiking as therapy, I have explored the back side and I have the GPS tracks to prove it. There's nothing there. We would have been lucky to get some blue squares in there. and 3-5 short trails. You can't exactly just look at a topographic map and come to the conclusion I'm wrong, and I wonder if 'The shops' and everything else at the base would even exist if it wasn't for the resort. So here we go, you're now a student of mine. We try to keep main system (upper mountain) at a low limit of 750Psi at the pump house with 4 pumps (north face has 2) so 6 pumps total pushing approximately up to 6,000GPM at MAX, I've heard rumors that the cost of making snow at 100% costs aprox $5,000 a night. Main system and north face, when priming the system, have pumps that can vary output and they're the only pumps used when priming the system which is mainly controlled digitally so we don't need to keep a man in the pump house all the time, just startup and shut down, and every time one of us checks on their assigned trail, will stop in the pump house to check the pressures, we try to do this as often as possible. there are instances like last year when we ran our Resi very low and started sucking up silt, we had the pump house Manned 100% of the time. Once the first pump is taxed out, another pump comes online and the first pump winds down, so lets say the first pump is tacked out and it could use another 20% the next pump is all or nothing, so the variable pump (Primary pump) I guess you'd say, will wind down after the next pump comes online to 20% and bring the pressure up as we light more guns until the third then 4th pump is needed. Sometimes pumps burn out, just the nature of things, fortunately, we can skip a pump and go from pump 2, to pump 4 if needed. Pump problems can be solved by an electrician, or in the worst case scenario, needs to be pulled out and up the mountain and shipped off to be re wound (refurbished) If we start bringing the pressure down around 720ish with all 4 pumps running on main system, we keep a close eye on it when we're blasting the mountain and guns based on which trail needs snow the most, sometimes, we may need to push it around 700 if absolutely needed. I usually take control of the terrain park trails because of my Park Crew experience and I always touch base with Parks supervisor before we begin blowing. I also try to be very precise on Spike to make life easier for grooming when building large jumps. (lets get back on track) Each slope has the ability to make a LOT of snow if pushed to the limit, so we can't blow every upper mountains guns at 100% In most cases, our guns start with "Primaries" and there are 3 "Rings" on the smaller towers and 4 on the big boys, we may sometimes start up a trail with primaries then make another round and assess the snow produced to see if it's safe to pop another ring. So when it's cold enough, a gun running with all rings open can make an incredible amount of snow, whales 20ft tall, 50ft long in a single night. Granted, we ( I ) only feel comfortable opening a gun wide open when temps are in the low teens and I keep a very close eye to be sure the nuke is still good. and the snow isn't too wet. At night it's easy to check if a gun is good or not because a gun with a nuke, with no nucleated snow coming out will create a RAINBOW which is very obvious at night. When temps are PRIME simply because we have so many guns on upper mountain but it's not really ever necessary to blast every trail 100% simply because we focus on just a few trails at a time.. AND! Upper and lower Fast Track and Runaway are on MAIN SYSTEM Reality is, things can and do go wrong, wether it be a pipe blowout or some other problem, such as electrical. If the power fluctuates on a trail and momentarily looses power, the guns don't turn back on but water still flows just like a fire hose. No snow will be made without it being propelled and nucleated, meaning the snow that was just being made, is now melting from the straight water coming out. Important note! when blowing a trails base, we don't mind wet snow for the tradeoff for quantity! Ideally it's best for the wet piles to air out for several days before being pushed by grooming. After a base is laid out, grooming gets angry when the snow is wet and this sometimes, in full disclosure can sometimes be the reason for an icy slope, a lot of times, we're blowing snow while grooming is out and we make snow on groomed trails, it's our fault, sometimes we ( I ) are a little ambitious and make a wet pile at the wrong time. we try to tell grooming to go back if this occurs. I personally run on the aggressive side and I don't play it safe unless it's the terrain park, since safety for the customers is important to me, and having the park crew background, blowing wet on the terrain park is something I just won't do. I usually do this on north face. Sometimes it pays off and I get some major props from ski patrol in the morning when they check the trails, Even though it makes grooming's lives harder. I've had a very angry groomer report my mistake, then on the other hand, the groomer gets major props from patrol when that deep chord is because I or the other guys make a great coverage of soft silky powder. Last year I heard over the radio, a patroller say my trail (Smoke) had the best conditions they've ever experienced after I had been scolded over the radio by grooming. One night last year we had aggressive orders to "Burry the mountain" Now this was during the polar vortex! We had to call grooming to come in early due to the massive amount of snow we made on north face. They weren't happy and I don't blame them, but they do get to sit in a heated cockpit while we're outside under guns all night, so.. I don't feel THAT bad. Each slope varies a bit at the gun as far as water psi but every gun has its own air compressor. So AIR Psi isn't something we necessarily keep track of at the gun and I have to be honest, I never really looked at what the air compressors are putting out so I apologize for that! The compressor is either on or off which in my opinion is very convenient. Again, NorthFace and upper mountain are on two different systems. I could be wrong but I think we aim to keep the Psi for NorthFace at 550 and we can blow, I'd say every single gun on north face at 75% if we were so inclined to do so but we usually focus on 2-3 trails at a time on north face 3 trails at 100% which would be rare. Starting up a gun: First of all, making snow is simply mixing compressed air with pressurized water, this action tares the water apart on a molecular level and that nucleated mist mixes with the nozzles around the barrel and poof, out comes snow. This nucleated mist comes out of the nuke, which is the nozzle in the middle of the bar inside of the barrel of the gun. If the system isn't primed and ready yet, we'll take a walk and turn on heaters for the nuke and mist nozzles. So here we go, Air compressor on, listen to the nuke for air coming out, hear it? Great! Turn the fan on!, hook the hoses up and slowly open the hydrant until water comes out, then we can quickly open the hydrants all the way for most of the lines. Walk around, check out the barrel to be sure the nuke has aerated water coming out. at this point, if air and water are coming out of the nuke, you're running on primaries. Depending on the wet bulb, we can safely turn a ring on. Now ya can lower or raise the barrel, aim the gun to optimize the lay on the trail taking into account the wind, and if the temps are marginal, we need to keep the barrels high so the mix coming out has time to freeze. If unsure about if you're making wet snow or not, we walk out and watch the snow land on our outreached arm and you can tell the quality and properties of the snow. We typically, once the season starts, obviously we try to get as many trails that differ in relation to one another going first. The other night we made snow on Whistler, easy street, cannonball, boomer, and obviously bunny and all of base area, we focused on only a few trails to get them open as fast as possible. Things went very well for our first real night and we made some massive piles that I feel will hold up. Upper and lower fast track and runaway typically come after we get the first 5 upper trails open. We do tend to have micro climates as the temps get very low, the base loading area at long haul, for some reason seems to be a bit warmer than the bottom of the north face lift but this doesn't effect us enough to make or not make snow. Also some rumors of it being haunted down there, but I'm guessing it's just veteran snow makers screwing with the new people. Top of the mountain can be up to 5 degrees colder than the bottom of the mountain, but the trade off is sometimes the wind is very intense and it's hard to keep the snow on the ground, I try to aim the guns down and a little wet to try and get it to fall faster and stick so the wind doesn't take it into the woods. Another problem you might never have heard of, once the temps get around 0, our snow turns straight to FOG and nothing really lands on the ground, even if the gun has all rings open and aimed down. You also wouldn't believe how easy it is for upper mountain to be -10 or more when in the valley it's above 0. It seems to me once the temps get around 0, they can drop faster and more erratically. I did actually have a gun last year that was making a pile of epic snow at extremely low temps, low single digits, low humidity making snow without nucleation. It also seems like, as long as I'm moving and my face is covered, I can't tell the difference between 15 and -15 degrees. Being a snowmaker is kind of like what you see on deadliest catch, it could literally make a successful reality series, we work our butts off, curse and swear, go home and get 4 hours of sleep but something inside us makes us want to come back, it's a little like an addiction. It's very difficult, it can be very frustrating, dangerous, and it can be a lot more responsibility than we feel should be put on us, but it pretty much makes the mountain our home, we feel very personal about it, It begins to not be so much about the money and more like a mission. It's not for everybody, it pretty much takes a very special kind of person to feel the same way that myself and other guys feel. We've had guys on their first night, say, "Hey guys, I need to go get something from my car" and they just leave and never return. So like I said, it's not for everyone, it takes a messed up individual to be able to keep going. Work ethic.. not just mentally, but physically.
