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Tina Sawyer: With winters being unpredictable in central and northern Michigan, many ski resorts are practicing a technique to extend their seasons. Snow farming is a natural way ski resorts collect and store snow to reduce the reliance on snow-making equipment during warm winters. And to learn more about how snow farming actually works, I had a conversation with the director of operations at Treetops Resort in Gaylord. His name is Brad Jacobson. And Jacobson started off the conversation describing what kind of equipment they use to gather snow.
Brad Jacobson: So we use giant snow cats or snow groomers, which are 24,000 pound, 300 to 450 horsepower. They're basically like, think of like a bulldozer and a… like farming equipment is basically kind of the easiest way, or a bulldozer. So basically, the snow cat has a blade on the front, metal tracks, steel tracks, and then a tiller on the back that processes the snow. So basically, to cover up these areas, we utilize the areas where we know, okay, we're sitting on 3 to 6 feet of snow in this area. Over here, we may be on 10 inches of snow. So, we actually have to be very strategic with the snow machines, you know, the groomers, and our teams to make sure that we push the snow efficiently into those areas. Sometimes we have to get to a narrow channel. Like for example, we have to get into a narrow spot where we may have either lost a bunch of snow, you know, a good amount that the natural earth is exposed. So basically, what we do is we call what we call our push roads, and basically we'll push a pile of snow and build up the side, 2, 3, 4 feet tall of snow. And it's basically like a giant channel that once we get the snow in there, we'll use the snow groomers to push the snow to that particular area.
TS: What if you have an ice storm or something, though, like this past season. Does that impact it at all?
BJ: So if we do get an ice storm or a warm up, during January, we have these little pockets of snow that we've kind of staged and farmed in anticipation that we might have a storm or we might have a warm up in January or February.
TS: So you really are farmers.
BJ: We are, you know, it's funny. Snow farming, people think it's either just grooming or it's just making snow, but it's actually an entire combination and process of really both.
TS: The process of collecting and moving the snow with these heavy snow cats you were talking about, they might have a significant carbon footprint.
BJ: They do, but we do have two of our machines are tier fours, stage fours. So basically, they're the most up-to-date. diesel engines, so they're very eco-friendly, and they are running smoothly, efficiently. That's the other part of this whole process is, you know, if we make too much snow or we're pushing too much snow, yeah, it could get, you know, expensive, and also leave a little bit more of a carbon footprint than we want. So that's the benefit of like, I've been here for nine years that I know, okay, this is how much we target our base depth around the entire ski hill. So that way we are actually being environmentally conscious and aware that we don't overrun our machines. We're not excessively operating. We're not doing an excessive draw of electrical grid. Man-made snow is much denser than natural snow.
TS: Yeah, and it melts slower, doesn't it?
BJ: Correct. Yeah, it's very dense. There is not a lot of air particles that are trapped within those snow-making particles. So where natural snow has a lot of air, and I will say a little bit of moisture within it, man-made snow is actually like a round ball. So that's how it can become so dense.
TS: So, when it does melt, is there any long-term effects on plant life or water cycles or anything like that?
BJ: Not for us in our area. We're very fortunate that we've got a very high water table. Everything that we make drains right back into our ski slope.
TS: And how late in the season do you go now that you have this technique?
BJ: We usually target openings usually first weekend of December. But in some years, we've had really good snow conditions. We've stayed open until the beginning of April. But at the end of the day, Mother Nature controls everything and she can throw you some curveballs.
TS: That's true. And that was Brad Jacobson from Treetops Ski Resort talking with me about snow farming.
