Why let summer melt away meters and meters of snow? Better to save it for next winter!
That is the reasoning behind what is happening in several ski resorts that in recent years have begun stockpiling snow to reuse it the following winter.
This practice has been dubbed by some with the broad term “snow farming”; essentially, it involves storing as much snow as possible in cool locations and preserving it until the following winter season.
Preserving large quantities of snow is not easy considering that our mountains are also exposed to high temperatures during the summer. For example, in summer 2013 temperatures exceeded 30 degrees in several resorts located at 1,000 m above sea level.
Clear proof that altitude is not always a guarantee comes from the Alpine glaciers: despite elevations almost always above 3,000 meters, they suffer enormously from scorching summers, so much so that even there the best solution against the heat is covering the ice with geotextile sheets.
Even so, several resorts have come up with ingenious and original solutions that have yielded surprising results!
Val Martello and Livigno, the system works!
Standing out among them all are the examples of Val Martello and Livigno.
Just in recent days, last winter’s snow was rolled back out in the Alto Adige valley;
during last winter’s season, around 5,000 cubic meters of artificial snow had been produced, creating a large white mound in the shade of the forest, and this huge mass of snow was then covered with about 40 cm of woodchips.
At the end of the summer, the mound yielded a remarkable 3,000 cubic meters of snow, which has now been used to reopen the cross-country ski trails. (link)
Grooming the trails in Val Martello with preserved snow
At the Mottolino Ski Area in Livigno, after building the gigantic Nine Knights castle (link) using a whopping 80,000 cubic meters of snow for the structure, the operators decided to try preserving it through the summer, covering the huge white mass with geotextile sheets.
Once the summer season ended, the sheets preserved roughly half of the old snow.
Other resorts that have already tried the experiment and achieved excellent results include Davos in Switzerland and Sochi in Russia, where last year’s snow is being preserved ahead of the Olympics.
The only disappointment was at Monte Bondone, where the attempt to cover the snow and preserve it for the Universiade failed, and the surviving snow will not make a significant contribution to the event. (link)
However, the cause can be attributed to the modest altitude of the ski area: the Livigno test was carried out at 2,000 m and the Val Martello one at 1,700 m.
Snow stockpiling for the 2014 Winter Olympics
Early lift opening thanks to old snow
The case of Val Martello shows how this technique can kick off the ski season well ahead of schedule. You just have to wait for the frost to arrive, and last season’s snow can be spread back onto the ground and used to groom the trails.
An interesting practice that allowed the Alto Adige resort to reopen its Biathlon center well ahead of the competition.
With the ski market demanding an ever-earlier start to the season and a climate that instead makes lift openings increasingly difficult, “snowfarming” appears to be a valuable weapon at ski resorts’ disposal.
The yield ranges from 40% to 60%, and the cost of creating the artificial snowbank and subsequently spreading it out appears not to exceed that of producing artificial snow with snow cannons.
The topic is generating so much interest that specialized companies are emerging in this field; in fact, a Finnish company spearheaded the snow preservation project for Sochi, and in Italy a dedicated conference was held at Passo Cerreto in Emilia Romagna.
If during a summer hike you happen to come across huge mounds of snow, don’t worry—it’s just Old Man Winter resting up as he waits for the new winter!
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