By Dan Balkin
Dan Steinbar would be the first person to tell you that snowmaking is a team effort – a big team effort with crews working around the clock for roughly six to eight weeks. That said, Dan is HoliMont’s Electrical Coordinator and plays a very important role in a very electrified snowmaking system. Dan sat down with me and graciously answered many questions about snowmaking to provide information for this article.
Many people might be surprised to know that HoliMont’s large, black pole mounted snow guns are world famous. Really? Really. A team comprised of HoliMont membership and HoliMont management collaborated to design, test, redesign and retest these guns many times over until they came up with a world-class product. The HoliMont snow gun was such a sensation that the club was issued a patent that has expired but was in place for twenty years. Famous ski areas in the Alps use the HoliMont designed snow gun, as do, to name just a few, marquee resorts such as Vail and Breckenridge.
The key components of a snowmaking system are electricity, compressed air, water, and an additive called Snomax. Dan explained that in Mother Nature’s plan, actual water droplets in the atmosphere congeal into either rain droplets or snowflakes by bonding themselves around a core of dust particles. According to Dan, “Snomax acts like dust in the air to form a “nucleus” that enhances the formation of artificial snow. Snowmax is added into HoliMont’s snowmaking system through three main water pumphouses. The amount of water that flows through the snowmaking system in the course of a winter is mind-boggling: Roughly 80 – 100 million gallons per year. Depending on how ideal the snowmaking temperature and humidity are, HoliMont can run between 1,000 to 6,000 gallons of water through the system per minute.
Most of us unfamiliar with the intricacies of snowmaking would assume that if it is reasonably cold, say 28 degrees Fahrenheit, that the guns can spit out snow. Once again, Dan, being an expert in the field, explained that humidity also plays a huge role in snowmaking. In snowmaking season, HoliMont constantly measures temperatures using both “dry bulb” and “wet bulb” thermometers. The wet bulb reading also accounts for moisture (humidity) in the air. I asked Dan what were ideal snowmaking conditions? He said 15 degrees Fahrenheit and 50 per cent humidity is snowmaking nirvana. Like most things in this world, however, ideal is elusive. Our relative humidity in the Enchanted Mountains of Catt County often hovers between 80 – 100 per cent.
Therefore, snowmaking is an art, not a simple exercise where the guns are merely turned on when the mercury dips below freezing. Dan said that HoliMont has a wide variety of snowguns, but many snowguns have three or four “banks” of nozzles that can be opened or shut depending on the interplay between temperature and humidity. The skill our snowmakers exhibit in managing this constantly shifting balance is one reason that HoliMont is known to have among the best man-made snow – anywhere. Obviously, the more ideal the snowmaking conditions, the more water that can flow through the guns and the more snow that is spread on the slope. A typical HoliMont snow gun at minimum capacity (higher temp / higher humidity) runs at 20 gallons of water per minute; at maximum capacity with ideal snowmaking weather, 100 gallons per minute – a figure which sounded strangely reminiscent of water usage when my kids were teenagers and taking showers.
And where does this blessing of plentiful water come from? We need look no further than the scenic Plum Creek which meanders through HoliMont. Water is pumped from Plum Creek to the smaller summit Saddle Pond (10 million gallons of water capacity) or the larger summit Horizon Pond (40 million gallons water capacity). As snowmaking water is drained during the winter, both ponds are typically refilled once.
I wish, in this short article, I could do justice to all the other contingencies / skills regarding keeping the snowmaking system operating Dan touched upon. Let us just say that HoliMont is grateful to Dan for his three decades of snowmaking expertise.