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In warming winters, a new method of preserving snow for skiing

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/ ... story.html

CRAFTSBURY, Vt. — In the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, a bucolic magnet for cross-country skiers, winter temperatures have been rising, snowfall has been dwindling, and a sport that is a driver of the state’s winter economy faces a perilous future.

But at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, about 30 miles from Canada, a first-time experiment in the United States is seeking to preserve more of the Nordic ski season and turn bare trails into ribbons of snow.

The bold experiment, conducted with the University of Vermont, seems impossible: Store large mounds of snow outside, all through the summer, and have enough survive to spread around when the season opens near Thanksgiving, when snow is increasingly unpredictable.

Cannatonic wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 09, 2019 10:59 am

In the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont ...

Always wanted to ski in Vermont. Smuggs mostly. XC downhill with skinny skis. No telefaking with fat skis and hard plastic boots. 

Farthest east I've skied is Porcupine Mountain, a neat ski area in the UP that offers beautiful views of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.

Store large mounds of snow outside, all through the summer, and have enough survive to spread around when the season opens near Thanksgiving ...

Sugar Mountain.

That's pretty cool.
They also do this in Trondheim (Norway), at the Granåsen "ski arena" which is the local XC race track. In the spring they cover remaining snow with woodchips and spread it out when it gets cold enough, typically early December.

This December we already have >50cm of snowfall, so I dont know if it was worth it, but some years it advances the ski season. However the surface covered is just a few km, and it mainly is used by the local XC competition skiers so they can train better.

I skied the preserved snow up at Craftsbury the weekend before Thanksgiving. The XC team I race with was up there for a few days of preseason training. They had a couple hundred meters of it out on one trail and the differences were obvious between it and the natural snow. Conditions on the natural stuff were pretty icy and a bit rough, but it was early anyways. The manmade stuff however, was very interesting. Definitely harder and faster as to be expected. Manmade is something like three times as dense as natural I've heard. It wasn't too icy though, which was good. It had an interesting off-white color to it. but I was told that's just because of a bit of the wood chips they put on top of it all sunmer filtering down into the snow. It didn't seem to affect my ski bases afterwards as they seemed just as clean as when I skied on normal snow. I have to say, after I got over the slightly unnerving off-white color of it, the preserved snow was actually pretty cool to ski on. It was certainly fast. And it had a nice woody smell to it.

Seriously -? Can we just talk skiing?