Adirondack Sports March 2024

ALPINE SKIING & SNOWBOARDING
Gore Snowmakers Shine
Amid Sparse Conditions
MARCH 2024 41
● EARLY SNOWMAKING ON TOPRIDGE TRAIL.
By Alex Kochon
Anyone who has skied at Gore Mountain in North
Creek, with 108 trails across nearly 448 acres, can
vouch for the superb snowmaking and grooming
this season. The state-owned ski area hasn’t been blessed
with abundant snow – instead, the opposite. Like
other downhill ski resorts across the state and country,
they’ve been dealing with one of the more lackluster
winters on record.
According to Gore Mountain Snowmaking Supervisor,
Dan Feiden, the amount of natural snowfall there has
been on par with the winter of 2015-16, “the winter that
wasn’t,” as he called it. That was his first year as the head of
snowmaking; he managed Gore’s tubing hill before that.
They opened about 50% of the mountain for skiing and
snowboarding that year.
Fast-forward to this season, a similar winter with temperatures
hovering just below freezing most nights, and
Gore’s snowmaking team produced enough snow to open
nearly 95% of their trails. This can be credited to Gore’s
hardworking employees, whose snowmaking team was
one of eight nationwide to earn a nomination in Ski Area
Management magazine’s “I AM a Snowmaker 2024” contest:
saminfo.com. Together with Gore’s grooming team,
they made mountains out of molehills.
Snowmaking typically begins in November when temperatures
allow and continues through January, usually
later. Snow is blown in piles, which groomers push around
to spread evenly over the trails. Sometimes, these mounds
are left for days to let the moisture leach out – especially
when the snow is made during “marginal” air temperatures:
about 16-30 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything warmer
than that is too warm to make snow, and colder (0-15
degrees) is optimal.
“It will typically take two or three nights to get a trail
ready after we’re done making snow on it,” Dan explained.
“The groomers spend the first night or two just pushing
the first piles around to evenly smear it around the trail,
then they’ll do a night or two of grooming with the actual
tillers down and turn it into the nice corduroy that people
like to ski on.”
● GORE’S SNOWMAKING SUPERVISOR DAN FEIDEN.
They start by covering half the trail with snow from
top to bottom. The other half is left for natural snow or
snowmakers to fill in later. They prioritize opening the
trail, then moving snow guns or pushing snow around
as needed. If all goes well, snowmaking can wrap up in
late January, “but that never happens,” Dan explained.
“It’s either Mother Nature is not working with us, or some
equipment maintenance is needed, but more times than
not in recent years, it’s Mother Nature.”
The goal is to make as much snow as possible through
February. “Usually, by then, we’ve been running so much
equipment for so many hours that the mountain starts
seeing enough snow made that we can scale back the
snowmaking.” Dan explained. “Our goal is to stay open as
long as possible.” he added. “The year before last, we went
to the first weekend in May.”
Throughout the season, his team works around the
clock during “cold weather windows,” running as much
snowmaking equipment as possible when temperatures
drop below freezing. This season, they’ve been limited to
snowmaking mostly at night and in the wee hours of the
morning, as their equipment requires temperatures colder
than 30 degrees. While Gore’s snowmakers have operated
most evenings this winter, temperatures have been
mainly in the marginal range, except for a few “optimal”
snowmaking nights thus far.
● GROOMING TEAM’S
SIERRA OLBERT ON
FRESHLY GROOMED
TERRAIN.
● SAFELY SHARING THE TRAIL.
GORE MOUNTAIN/OLYMPIC AUTHORITY
“When we get 90 to 95 percent of the mountain open
on a year like this, it makes me really happy with the
improvements we have made,” Dan said.
In the last eight years, Gore has nearly doubled its
snow-gun fleet to almost 2,000 snow guns spread throughout
four peaks. Some of these are permanently fixed to the
slopes, others are mobile, and hundreds are energy efficient
– producing ten times the amount of snow with the
same amount of air required by an older-style snow gun.
This has resulted in substantial energy savings for
the mountain, bolstered by a recent $1.2-million-dollar
National Grid incentive to cover half the cost of these
high-efficiency snow guns: goremountain.com.
This year, the Olympic Regional Development
Authority, which operates the Gore, Whiteface, and
Belleayre ski areas, purchased 136 energy-efficient,
tower-mounted snow guns for Gore in partnership with
National Grid. A press release stated that these are expected
to conserve more than 2.1 kilowatt-hours per year
while pumping out 190 acre-feet of snow.
See ALPINE SKIING & SNOWBOARDING 43 ▶