http://www.sltrib.co...92896?source=rv
Good grooming a must for elite resorts
Skiing » Snowcat drivers toil on trails so destination resorts can provide skiers with a value for their money.
By Mike Gorrell
The Salt Lake Tribune
Posted: 01/30/2009 04:31:01 PM MST
Click photo to enlargeOne of only four grooming machines of its size in the... (Jim Urquhart / The Salt Lake Tribune)«12345»The Canyons » All clear, the ski patrol reported at 5:17 p.m. on a Monday evening.
The groomers were off.
For the next seven hours, John "Bish" Neuhauser and eight swing-shift co-workers chugged up and down assigned areas of this expansive Park City-area resort in snowcats. They pushed snow around and combed it into a level surface of parallel grooves, fine "corduroy" in industry parlance.
Their shift done, another crew took over, manicuring more slopes until the lifts opened the next morning.
Good grooming is a must in the modern ski world, especially for destination resorts because -- along with snowmaking -- it virtually guarantees there is decent skiing somewhere. That helps guarantee steady business , a must in unsteady times.
"We cover 3,700 acres," observed swing shift supervisor Nick Moench, "so we have a lot of responsibility to get it ready for that person who comes the next day and buys a lift ticket. It's pretty amazing what we can accomplish in one night."
Every night. All winter. Sometimes in blinding blizzards, sometimes in the all-out illumination of a full moon. Watched at times by coyotes and owls, maybe even a UFO or two.
"Two times I saw things I couldn't take a stab at explaining," acknowledged Neuhauser, 47, who has groomed ski slopes for almost a quarter century.
The importance of grooming has expanded steadily during his tenure. Skiers and boarders expect it. Magazines judge resorts based, in part, on how well they do it. Marketers sell it, while pushing expensive lift tickets.
"The Utah ski industry markets to a vast range of ski abilities and styles," said Nathan Rafferty, president of Ski Utah, marketing arm for the state's 13 resorts. "Whether visitors prefer powder or corduroy, Utah's resorts constantly strive to provide perfect conditions for a variety of snow riders. Utah's variable terrain and grooming are as important as the snow itself."
Plugging Utah's famous tagline, he added " 'The Greatest Snow on Earth' makes for the greatest groomers on Earth."
Bish and the boys buy that.
"We're all skiers and sliders," Neuhauser said. "We like to groom powder almost as much as we like to ski it."
He has been doing it since 1985, a couple of years after coming west from Massachusetts as a ski bum. He was a lift operator at Park West (one of the earlier names for The Canyons) and worked parking at Deer Valley. But then his mechanical inclination, reinforced by summer jobs on fishing boats back East, steered him into grooming.
A veteran now, Neuhauser usually runs one of the big boys of The Canyons' snowcat fleet, the Prinoth BR500. Only four of these $400,000 units operate in North America. Two are at The Canyons.
The BR500 is 22 feet wide, when flaps on either side of the corduroy-carving tiller are out. It weighs 22,000 pounds and burns 6.5 gallons of diesel fuel each hour in its 500 horsepower Caterpillar engine. Its cab is like an airplane cockpit -- all windows, light switches and buttons to push.
Every so often he operates a "winch cat," a groomer with a scorpion-like arm that can unreel up to 3,300 feet of wire rope with a hook on the end. The hook goes around a tree or an anchor embedded in concrete, supporting the snowcat as it moves up and down especially steep runs.
Neuhauser is in the BR500 on this Monday evening, when light clouds shed the final flakes of a potent weekend storm. After checking the oil and the undercarriage through the machine's tank-like tracks, Neuhauser headed toward his main assignments -- Apex Ridge and Boa, two long intermediate runs off Super Condor Express lift.
The evening light was still vivid but destined to fade fast when he stopped off at Kestrel, a steep run that falls off Apex Ridge's left shoulder. He groomed its lower half so winch cat operator Mike Everett didn't have as much territory to cover after winching down Kestrel's diving top pitch, leveling its moguls.
By the time Neuhauser finished, it was dark. It would remain so for the last six hours of his shift, and the first six hours of the graveyard shift, whose workday-ending reward often is a spectacular sunrise or some other striking visual. "It gets kind of surreal sometimes when it gets misty," Neuhauser noted.
Dark is not a problem. Snowcats have powerful lights, casting shadows that help Neuhauser distinguish flat from bumpy, a distinction his machine quickly eliminates.
He really doesn't need to see too much to groom. In fact, "my favorite time is when we have a big storm with a lot of wind. It's great to be in a climate-controlled bubble watching the swirling action of the snow in the lights and the drifts on the surface. You're witnessing something most people don't experience -- substantial weather events. I like looking at weather."
Operating by feel as much as sight, Neuhauser hardly ever stops moving. His hands move joy sticks, one covered with little buttons, back and forth, left and right, adjusting the machine's numerous moving parts. He punches buttons. He munches gummi bears.
"For a person with pretty good aptitude, it takes a good three to four seasons to get really handy at it," Neuhauser said. "You never quit perfecting your techniques. You're always fidgeting with the controls to get as good a surface as you can."
Different snow demands different approaches. A hard snowpack has to be churned up a little more, so there is more overlap in each pass. But hardpack provides a better grip for snowcats than uncompacted snow, which can lead to some wild rides.
"In the old days, there was a lot more cowboy-style grooming and it was more exciting," he said. "We still do some of that, but the winch cat took the crazy out of it."
The world is more businesslike now, and grooming is popular with the relatively affluent baby boomers. Smooth surfaces appeal to folks now skiing into their 70s and 80s, said National Ski Areas Association spokesman Troy Hawks. "Boomers may be older, but they still seek the thrills of steep terrain and well-kept glades."
Providing that makes Neuhauser proud. "There's a feeling of satisfaction when you see your work in the morning."
mikeg@sltrib.com
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spunkyskier01, on Jan 20 2009, 10:22 AM, said:
I know I'm off topic.
