Left: A scythe team preps Mad River Glen’s (Vt.) steeper trails for snow.
Below: The Summit at Snoqualmie, Wash., relies almost entirely on natural snowfall to open, which means lots of trail prep work.
GETTING TRAILS READY FOR WINTER
It pays to do work during the summer so trails can open with less snow come winter.
BY PETER OLIVER
maximal use of minimal early-season snow, man-made or natural. Over the years, mountain ops teams have continually tweaked and refined the trail-prep process, but the basics— mowing and mulching, surface con- touring, water management—haven’t changed dramatically. The purpose: to open trails with far less snow coverage than if trails were left unattended. When it comes to snowmaking, being able to open trails with less snow is an obvious cost-saver. But whether on snowmaking or natu- ral-snow trails, being able to extend the season by opening earlier (and staying open later) can be a revenue generator. OLD-SCHOOL TRAIL PREP Some trail-prep methodology continues to be downright quaint, as in the use of such yesteryear equipment as hand-held scythes. The image of a scythe-wielding
team slashing its way down a mountain trail evokes a scene out of a van Gogh painting, a romanticization of pre-in- dustrial labor. Another pre-industrially quaint image comes from Katherine Seleski, now working for Castle Mountain in southern Alberta, but who was previ- ously the general manager at Pass Pow- derkeg, a small neighboring ski area. Pass Powderkeg, she says, tried using goats to clear grass and brush, only to abandon the idea when negative interactions with bears became an issue. Cutting by hand. The van Gogh scenario enters the trail-prep picture courtesy of Mad River Glen in Vermont, a ski area that has proudly built a national reputation on its old-school approach to just about every aspect of ski-area man- agement. Snowmaking coverage is mini- mal, and on the few trails that do feature snowmaking, the trail-prep technology
In the last decade or so, no aspect of mountain operations has been more completely transformed by new tech- nology than snow management. Li- DAR mapping combined with sophisti- cated grooming software has enabled groomers to efficiently spread snow, man-made or natural, across a trail in an even blanket—not too deep here, not too shallow there. Low-e artillery has prompted dramatic recalculations of energy requirements. Automation has enabled snowmakers to make the most of diurnal temperature fluctua- tions. And so on. But modern technology hasn’t eclipsed all methodology in achieving maximum efficiency in snow manage- ment, especially when there isn’t even snow on the hill. Summer trail prepa- rations continue to rely largely on old-school practices, many predating snowmaking, and are critical in making
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