Want good snow?
Seek good data.
Snowmaking and enhanced snow-depth
data are showing resorts across the map
that a bad snow season does not have to
mean an unprofitable snow season
“We believe snow-depth measurement
systems are an extremely valuable
tool,” said Doug Holler, the director
of Dartmouth Skiway, a 100-acre
ski area owned by Dartmouth College.
“I think you can apply it in a variety of
ways and if you have great monitoring,
resorts can manage things better.”
Traditionally, resorts measured
snow depth by their own traditions.
Sometimes resorts updated information
by manually recording a snowreporting
stake. Others used stationary
snow sensors or recorded snowfall
as it piled on a board. The daily snow
report represented the snow depth
somewhere close to the heavily trafficked
base or a solitary mid-mountain
spot. One thing is certain: Resorts have
tried everything.
“We’ve tried a million different
things,” Susie Barnett-Bushong, a past
marketing director for Grand Targhee
Resort, once told the L.A. Times.
Three or four data points to represent
hundreds, sometimes thousands,
of acres of snow will not always cut it.
Snow-depth mapping systems, which
create colored snow-depth maps of
mountain runs using thousands of
snow-depth measurements, have
helped resorts save thousands of dol-
Utah mountain resorts faced an
uninspiring winter during the
2017-18 season as the combined
snowfall dropped 40
percentage points below average, according
to industry data.
The previous year was graciously
snowy. Skiers and snowboarders had
flocked to the slopes, breaking Utah’s
all-time resort attendance record.
This past winter – despite the lackluster
snowfall and unseasonably warm
weather – Utah’s ski industry steadied
attendance with, among other things,
enhanced snow management methods.
The 2017-18 season ended as the
sixth-best season in history for attendance
– on par with Utah’s 10-year
average, according to Ski Utah, a nonprofit
dedicated to promoting Utah’s
ski industry.
“Utah’s resorts stepped up by investing
in snowmaking infrastructure and
delivering unparalleled experiences for
skiers and riders on and off the slopes,”
Ski Utah President Nathan Rafferty
said in June.
In tandem, snowmaking and enhanced
snow-depth data are showing
resorts across the map that a bad snow
season does not have to mean an unprofitable
snow season. Data-driven
technology for snow management,
like snow-depth mapping, is making
the difference.
TECHNOLOGY
By Paul Kelley
lars every year on snow-making and
snow-grooming costs. Resort operations
use the data to map assets, find
and cut spring roads, and strategize
snow-making and snow-grooming priorities.
In addition, resort operations
use the data to prevent bare spots and
maintain even terrain, improving the
skier experience.
However, resorts should determine
what level of snow-measurement accuracy
is appropriate for their operation.
Costs for snow-depth systems can
vary widely from the price of piercing
a stake into the ground to more than
$100,000 for some snow-depth mapping
systems.
Those $100,000 systems use GPSbased
technology that relies on a
summertime lidar scan produced by
a plane or drone to capture the topographic
details of a mountain. Ultrahigh
precision GPS receivers attached
to groomers – and connected to a
mountain-wide server system – then
measure the difference from the lidar
scan to create snow-depth data. Data
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