As ski season nears, a B.C. resort is making snow in 20-degree weather
The Weather Network gets the details on a new technology that enables snow-making in temperatures as warm as 20 C
Depending on where you are in Canada, this might be hard to believe, but ski season is now just weeks away!
Despite parts of the West, including Calgary, seeing temperatures in the mid-to-high teens as the third week of October comes to an end, opening dates are being set at resorts across Western Canada.
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And, while these dates are typically weather-dependent, one resort is taking the matter into its own mitts, employing a novel, snow-making technology that can pump out powder in astonishing, 20-degree temperatures.
“Some of us were in shorts when we fired it up,” says Grouse Mountain assistant general manager Grant Wahl.
“Everyone’s just blown away. It’s really cool watching the team embrace it.”
A handful of Western Canadian ski resorts confirmed opening date plans to The Weather Network. These are, of course, weather-dependent and subject to change.
Grouse Mountain’s Wahl says the resort is the first in Canada to try out the novel, Latitude 90 snow-making system.
While traditional snow guns rely on the atmosphere to freeze water, the Latitude 90 system, which was designed in Quebec, relies on internal refrigeration built into a shipping container.
Water is pumped into a refrigerated evaporator within the container, where it freezes before being ground up into tiny ice particles, then projected up to 100 metres.
Whereas traditional snow-making requires a “wet bulb temperature” of around -2 C to begin working efficiently, Latitude 90 boasts that its systems can work in temperatures of up to 25 C above.
A handful of Western Canadian ski resorts confirmed opening date plans to The Weather Network. These are, of course, weather-dependent and subject to change.
For resorts that go through significant temperature swings and extended stretches of warmth, that’s a game-changer, especially when those resorts also struggle with high humidity.
The more humid an air mass, the less potential for evaporation, which is a cooling process that benefits traditional snow-making systems.
“Being on the West Coast here, we deal with some downtime when it comes to snow-making. We have to wait for the humidity to drop,” says Wahl.
“With this machine, if you really want to get a good amount out, that can happe at plus 20, and as it gets cooler it starts pumping out more.”
Grouse Mountain. Resort operators say about 2,000 cubic metres of snow has been produced since September. They expect to only lose about 10 per cent to melting. (Grouse Mountain/Submitted to The Weather Network)
Since first towing the machine up the mountain in September, resort operators have made about a 2,000-cubic metre “whale” of snow, Wahl says. And, with tarping and the denser nature of machine-made snow, he expects to only lose about 10 per cent before the pile is pushed out to help groom a run.
He adds that if the initial season using the new system goes as planned, there’s an appetite at the resort to expand its use. Still, he says he sees the machine as complementary to a traditional snow-making system, to help ensure key parts of the mountain have skiable snow year-round.
“It’s good snow. It slides. You groom it up and you can’t really tell the difference once you’ve thrown a groomer on there,” he says.
“So, if this works the way we think it’s going to work, it’s going to get us open when we want to be open, and keep us going through the season.”
Thumbnail courtesy of Grouse Mountain.