trek to get to the Uptown trail, which Mahon joked could now be renamed “Downtown.”
Ski Butternut, MA
Last spring, family-owned Ski Butternut retired its oldest lift, the 50-year-old Thiokol triple Over- brook. In its place, a Skytrac quad with a new-and- improved alignment is being installed. The new lift will be named Jane’s in honor of Jane Murdock, the co-founder of the ski area who died last winter. Even though the lift will go from a triple to a quad, design capacity remains the same at 1,800 pph. The design includes a 300 hp drive motor at the bottom station and bottom tensioning. The old 1975 Thiokol posed several challenges. True to its name, Overbrook ran over a creek in a ravine. “Although scenic, it was not an ideal location for new construction or ongoing maintenance,” said marketing director Dillon Mahon. Operations staff selected the new alignment in consultation with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation (Butternut’s landlord) to avoid the ravine and end higher up the moun- tain. The new top station will eliminate an uphill
Butternut was able to finish most of the site prep in fall 2024. A local contractor cleared a 50-foot-wide corridor, and Butternut staff graded with backhoes, excavators, and bulldozers. Skiers enjoyed a pre- view of the new 757-vertical-foot lift line during the 2024-25 season, and work resumed in May. An extremely wet spring in the Northeast proved challenging, but crews worked around the weather. Butternut removed the old lift and Skytrac mobi- lized to install the new 3,693-foot-long quad. Fifteen tower foundations were excavated by mid-summer. No blasting was needed, and no helicopter was needed to pour concrete. Towers will be flown in by helicopter in late summer. Butternut’s in-house team reconfigured snowmak- ing infrastructure around each terminal location, requiring approximately 2,000 feet of new pipe and several new snow guns. As of late July, both ter- minal foundations were complete, with Jane’s 124 chairs expected to be spinning by early December.
Wisp Resort, MD
In the 70-year history of the resort, neither Possum nor Grouse Way previously had fixed-position guns.
Maryland’s only ski area worked all summer to improve its snowmaking system, with a focus on automation and fixed-position gun technology for better coverage. The plan was three-fold. First, a conveyor-served beginner slope called Sun- set Boulevard would receive two new guns, replac- ing old guns. Then, the bulk of the work would focus on Possum, a much longer beginner trail requiring 16 new guns, new lateral piping, and new electrical and communications lines. The final piece would be the installation of all new pipe, wiring, fiber lines and 10 guns on intermediate trail Grouse Way.
Wisp’s in-house snowmaking team ordered the equipment in March. Each of the 28 new Tech- noAlpin guns is fully automated. Wisp purchased a mix of 10-foot and 20-foot TL8 sticks, deployed depending on trail width. Each gun is mounted on new TechnoAlpin steel pits. Despite adding snow guns to its fleet, Wisp didn’t need to add any additional water storage or pump- ing capacity; the mountain sits near Deep Creek Lake and an existing primary pumphouse can move up to a staggering 15,450 gallons per minute.
Wisp’s team broke ground on Sunset Boulevard in April. By May, they were working on all three trails to install 1,300 feet of eight-inch main pipe and 1,200 feet of two-inch lateral pipe. Several rocky areas proved challenging, requiring the use of a large excavator and bulldozer to move rock. Despite wet conditions on the mountain all spring, the project remained on track as of late July.
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator