Photo: Levi Ski Resort
If you’re the kind of person who has your season pass purchased by mid-summer every year, marks the days on your calendar until Opening Day, and froths over news of the first resort opening near you, then that excitement (nowadays) relies heavily on snow farming. It’s a process of collecting and storing snow at resorts under anything from sawdust to high-tech thermal blankets so that it doesn’t melt away after one winter, and then having all that snow available to get a head start on the upcoming season without relying on the first significant storm.
We often see some resorts in North America put parts of their piles to use for summer ski days, lifting tarps to reveal enough snow for a mini park on a short hill. But the resort that pioneered the process as we know it now just revealed an impressive snow pile.
Finland’s Levi Ski Resort created the process of saving snow after warm weather in 2007, 2011, and 2015 kept them from hosting the Alpine Ski World Cup. Realizing that blasting dry hills with even the most advanced snow-making machines wasn’t going to solve their problems, they started engineering today’s snow storage system in 2016. They took that stored snow and spread it over the Levi Black slope in late October-November for that year’s World Cup race and then another light bulb went off: that same process could be applied to ensuring early season openings. Levi’s been leading the charge ever since, and now they have a full-blown operation that ensures every season gets its best start possible.
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“Today, the snow piles are covered with around 400 insulating accordion mats. These mats, 70 mm thick, four meters wide, and 18 meters long, are topped with protective sheets. Made by Finnfoam, the insulating mats and filter fabrics are designed to withstand harsh weather conditions,” the resort said in a release. “In autumn, when temperatures drop, the covers are removed, and the stored snow is spread on the slopes and trails for the season opening. Before a thick and permanent natural snow cover arrives, additional snowmaking is done – but only as much as is necessary. Resource and energy efficiency in snowmaking are central to Levi Ski Resort’s environmental work, as the resort operates in a sensitive Arctic environment.”
