8 replies to this topic

[Bill]

Check this out!

Mt. Baker brought in a helicopter to help them move snow to the much needed slopes.

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[SkiBachelor]

Geeze, that's crazy.

I wonder why Baker spent the money for a helicopter to help transport snow, because that's not cheap at all? I wonder if Baker will install a snowmaking system next year?

[Powdr]

That seems like a lot of effort for minimal gain. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to haul snow with a cat from some flat meadow areas?

When I was working at PCMR in the old days (before serious snowmaking hardware was brougth in), we used to have to shovel snow onto Payday and Claimjumper from the adjacent tree areas. Never really seemed to work, since the amount we could shovel was quickly eaten up by melt or scaped off by skiers.

Reminds me of the old cartoon where a gas guzzler car pulls up to a gas station and the owner leaves the engine running. The station attendant says to the driver "do you mind shutting off the engine, shes gaining on me"

Powdr

[iceberg210]

Man they must really be having a rough snow year it isn't cheap to hire a chopper. In the NW when the loggers need a chopper they cut trees for about a day and then rent a chopper for an hour to lift all the trees away and they have all the trees ready to go with harnesses already on them so they just have to hook the chopper to the tree just to minimize the time they put on the chopper.

[tetsuma]

iceberg210, on Mar 3 2005, 04:31 PM, said:

Man they must really be having a rough snow year it isn't cheap to hire a chopper... .
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, before they brought in the helicopter (this was the second time in 4 weeks they brought it in), they were using the White Salmon lift to move bags of snow to the top -- all harvested from the WSalmon parking lot -- to improve coverage (after they closed temporarily last month). Lots of work for folks shoveling, I hear.

david

[edmontonguy]

Here in Edmonton in order to get the Cross country trails up and running as soon as possible we snow farm. This works very well on one of the large open loops where snowblowers are used to take snow from either side of the trial and blow it onto the center. If any sufficent melting happens we get the same ribbon of snow effect where the trails are the only bits of snow. Late season races also sometimes employ volunteers to shovel snow onto uphills especially the ones which face into the sun. Uphills take the worst abuse from the assault of 300+ skiiers in a relatively short time and during the spring when snow bases are starting to decline there is a greater risk of the hills wearing down. Volunteers therefore must shovel snow periodically in order to keep excessive wear from happening.

[liftmech]

SkiBachelor, on Mar 2 2005, 07:58 PM, said:

Geeze, that's crazy.

I wonder why Baker spent the money for a helicopter to help transport snow, because that's not cheap at all? I wonder if Baker will install a snowmaking system next year?
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Snomaking systems cost $$$$. Baker's ambient humidity is also higher than one would like for snowmaking. This also is a very bad snow year; you all know how much snow Baker gets just on an average basis. There really is no need for snowmaking up there.

Powdr- it would be easier to doze snow from a flat area but the run they needed snow on has none nearby. In fact, the closest flat area happens to be the parking lot, and after that it's the bench from which they harvested the goods via helicopter. They figured the benefits outweighed the cost; no word on whether they got the investment back or not.

[Lendog]

That is sad...... If Baker was worried about cost, they wouldn't be running on Diesel generators for their whole mountain. No commercial power available due to distance and National forest regs on buried power.
I had to check out their system for Y2kBS, I was amazed to see all the generators at that place, that's a lot of fuel consumption.

[liftmech]

Yes it is. Add to that maintenance costs like changing the oil every week, rebuilding generators every third year, buying propane in huge amounts to heat everything (although in some cases electric heat isn't as efficient as propane), et cetera. One byproduct of the generators was heating buildings via a heat exchanger. Some of the lower day lodge and all of the lower shop, plus all of the upper shop, are heated this way. They do have a 'summer' generator in the upper base area that generates 25 kW instead of the bigger sets' 100; that is run at night and on weekends during the summer.

Baker has been trying for years to get commercial power. At one point we were talking with Puget Power about burying the line in the highway, when DOT was repaving. DOT also runs on a generator for their shop, and they were going to split the costs of mainlining with us (proportionally, of course). We had also talkied about replacing those somewhat outdated Cat 3306 sets with a locomotive set located at the base of chairs 4 and 5. That would probably have provided enough power for both base areas plus that little restaurant at the base of chairs 3, 4, 5, and 6. The idea behind that was if chair 5 ever became a detachable, it would be better to power it via a more normal electric motor rather than diesel to get the regenerative drive capability.

Lendog- you were at Baker in 1999, sounds like? Do you remember who showed you around? I was working there then, although I don't remember anyone coming up to check out our generators.