Left: The Gray Butte expansion at Mt. Shasta Ski Park, Calif., (top pod at left) added roughly 200 skiable acres and 650 vertical feet. Above: A new lift at Whitewater, B.C., brought an additional 123 acres of terrain and 535 vertical feet in 2023-24 (green shading), and another 60 acres of previously backcountry terrain for 2024-25 (orange shading).
CUTTING TRAILS Most operators already have a relative- ly clear vision of the trail layout from the initial walk-through and permitting processes, but once the actual trail-cut- ting begins, the project starts to become a reality. Tree work. Many operators have found mutually beneficial ways to work with logging companies and mills to minimize, or in some cases offset, their costs. Trollhaugen worked with a local logging company that paid the ski area for access to timber and permission to thin on the backside of the property. While it didn’t completely offset the expansion project’s cost, it didn’t hurt. “We basically told them what we wanted cut and allowed them access to thinning on the back ends of our prop- erty,” says Trollhaugen general manag- er Jim Rochford. “That project would’ve taken our staff probably two months, but it took them and their machines two- and-a-half days.”
Mt. Shasta Ski Park worked out a sim- ilar deal, selling the timber that had been cleared for the new terrain to a local mill. Erosion control. Of course, with any construction project where a natural surface will be altered, managing storm- water to meet regulations and prevent erosion is critical. An important compo- nent of a successful expansion project is working with an engineering firm that can help determine how to maintain the pre-project hydrology by using buffers, swales, water bars, culverts, and other best management practices (BMPs). But while stormwater mitigation and treat- ment measures can be daunting, the extent to which they’re required is very site specific. At Trollhaugen, for example, since the new terrain was naturally skiable and required minimal dirt work, the hydrolo- gy remained the same and only required minor stormwater control measures. Where the ski area did have to deal with stormwater mitigation was in its parking
lot expansion, which increased the over- all footprint of an impermeable surface.
MORE THAN NEW TERRAIN Thinking beyond the physical terrain is also key to a ski area’s expansion success. If there’s no room for additional skiers to park or enough staff to operate lifts, all the additional terrain in the world won’t matter. Most of these considerations are pretty obvious—the need for increased parking capacity, additional grooming and snowmaking equipment, additional staffing and whether applicants are even available, water availability and how to get it to the new terrain, required electri- cal infrastructure, and so on. British Columbia’s Whitewater Ski Resort, which added 123 acres of terrain and 535 vertical feet with the addition of a new lift in 2023-24, had to add a volt- age regulator to manage the increased electrical demand, while at Mt. Shasta, an additional lift crew was hired to oper- ate the new chairlift. Some ski areas even
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