Snowmaking keeps ski hills going in warm winter

The soft powder can feel great when one goes skiing or snowboarding, makes snowmen, or goes tobogganing — so long as it’s there.

That wasn’t the case over the holiday in Calgary with a notably brown Christmas, with Environment Canada forecasting in early December a warmer winter for most of western Canada.

Calgary’s premier ski hill, WinSport Canada Olympic Park, actually had a delayed start due to warmer weather in November.

And while Calgary has seen some snow right before the New Year, the ski hill has been making snow for years that is — no offence to Mother Nature — a little more resilient to warmer temperatures.

“It’s not cheap, but to get the public out there we’re willing to do anything,” Dale Oviatt, the senior communications manager with WinSport, told CityNews.

He says the park gets started as soon as the weather hits -3 C for consistency.

It might be a little bit noisy for those living in the area while snow is made, though it lasts over 10 24-hour days on the grounds in the park along the Trans Canada Highway.

The man-made snow has the look and feel of the real thing, albeit with a subtle blue tinge due to the Snomax, which is combined with water to make snowflakes.

Once made, the mix goes through underground pipes to 50 snowguns placed around the hill, blowing the snow into big piles, which are then groomed.

“And if it’s colder, that makes more snow in a shorter period of time,” Oviatt said. “The colder it is, the better the consistency of the snowflake.”

The entire process takes several weeks with about a 50-centimetre base of snow that is expected to last well into the winter season.

It’s a pricey proposition, but one WinSport relies on to operate.

“We’ve invested multi-million dollars over the last seven or eight years in terms of upgrading our snow-making system, adding it to be more technologically advanced, and then of course the actual price of making snow is expensive in itself,” he said.

Oviatt says it will likely be a winter wonderland in April and sufficiently snowy when WinSport hosts the Freeski Halfpipe World Cup.

With files from Nadia Moharib