BEAVER CREEK - At 11 a.m., the day shift of snowmakers shuffled into the Trapper's Pumphouse, past the giant air compressors and water pumps, while the night crew shuffled out.

Time to make the snow.

The workers walked past the nerve center of Beaver Creek's 24-hour-a-day snowmaking operation, a small room where a half-dozen computer screens monitor how the resort tries to imitate Mother Nature.

Inside, Gary Shimanowitz, Beaver Creek's snowmaking manager, briefed the day-shift supervisor, Fred Kirr, on what was happening. The day was getting warmer - close to the warmest it can be for snowmaking. So they needed to shut off the fans guns that were blasting snow on the mountain, Shimanowitz said.

And Beaver Creek had to stop much of its snowmaking earlier in the day because of limits on how much electricity it can use when demand is high elsewhere in the valley, Shimanowitz said.

But snowmakers seemed to be making good progress.

"We're probably ahead of where we were last year," Shimanowitz said.

Crews started making snow last week on the Birds of Prey World Cup course, and they started this week on the trails at the bottom of the mountain. The crew of 30 snowmakers are now working around the clock.

This week's storm dumped almost a foot of snow on Beaver Creek Mountain. But natural snow doesn't slow down the snowmakers. They want to ensure there will be good base of snow when the mountain opens on Nov. 22. And lots of manmade snow can ensure good coverage at the end of the year if there's little snowfall in March and April.

"It's like an insurance policy on years when you have a lean snow year," Shimanowitz said. "We want to have a nice, consistent product regardless of how much snow we get."

Wonders of evaporative cooling

By next week, Beaver Creek will ramp up its snowmaking. The mountain makes snow on 635 acres, while Vail, a much bigger ski mountain, makes snow on just 390 acres.

On the Birds of Prey course, snowmakers are making really wet snow to create the icy and hand-packed course that racers prefer.

On Friday morning, tall wales of manmade snow lay on the course after a night of snowmaking. A snowcat that was winched to a pole was spreading the snow on "The Brink," a steep face on the course. The World Cup race starts at the end of November.

On the rest of the mountain, crews make light snow that Shimanowitz said is similar to the powder that falls out of the sky.

"You're not going to make the crystals that fall out of the sky," he said. "It's similar, but not identical."



Beaver Creek has 1,300 snowmaking hydrants across the mountains and a couple of dozen portable fan guns.

The hydrants mix water and compressed air, and via a method called "evaporative cooling," the water droplets turn to snow crystals. Shimanowitz said the same effect applies when you hold a warm can of beer in a wet sock out the window of the moving car - it gets really cold.

After the hydrants blow the snow, snowcats smooth it out.

The resort pulls water out of the Eagle River to fill its reservoir at Trapper's Pumphouse. A system of pumphouses around the mountain move around water and compressed air in underground pipes.

They'll continue to make snow when the mountain opens, turning on the snow guns when the lifts stop running. Beaver Creek usually stops making snow in January.



Staff Writer Edward Stoner can be reached at 748-2929 or estoner@vaildaily.com.



Vail, Colorado