Keystone, Colorado – Slopes Keystone Resort On the Friday before Thanksgiving, before the ski resorts opened, I stood on top of Mount Decum, 11,640 feet above sea level, watching the ski resort’s massive snowmaking operation.
Nearby, a mobile fan gun from the Italian manufacturer TechnoAlpin sits at the top of the Mozart slope, spraying water droplets down the mountain.
The weather station inside Precision Machinery showed a temperature of 32.9 degrees. But the humidity is only 14%, and the effective temperature required to make snow (called the wet-bulb temperature) is 21.7 degrees. Cold enough for snow.
The sight of those water droplets crystallizing into snow makes Keystone Mountain Director of Operations Kate Schifani and Kolina Coe dizzy.
“I could talk about snowmaking all day long,” Schifani said more than once throughout the morning.
Snowmaking machines at U.S. ski resorts prepare for opening. From Sugarloaf, Maine to Mammoth Mountain in California, snowmaking teams are recognized on social media as resorts try to get guests excited about gliding on the snow.
And for good reason: Snowmaking technology can help ski areas create a snow base to open faster and stay open more reliably, extending the season and improving profits. Technological advances are helping resorts make snow faster, more cost-effectively and more sustainably.
Keystone has 672 fixed and mobile snow guns that can be deployed on approximately 40 percent of the 3,148 skiable acres. Like many ski areas, large-scale snowmaking gives Keystone confidence that it can start the ski season within a reliable time frame each year, even in the face of climate change.
A Keystone mobile fan gun is blowing snow on a November morning. Photo credit: Robert Silk
In 2019, Keystone improved its snowmaking operations, deploying 53 modern snowmaking machines and new water pipes on the 2-mile route that opened for the first time each season. The improvements have helped Vail Resorts hotels push their average opening date to Oct. 27 since 2019, compared with the average opening date of Nov. 8 in the previous six years.
Keystone is now often one of the first mountains to open in Colorado, along with nearby Loveland and Arapahoe basins and Wolf Creek in southern Colorado.
Like ski resorts around the world, Keystone faces the challenge of making snow as sustainably as possible, especially given that the industry is severely affected by climate change.
Schifani said there’s always been a push and pull dynamic in Keystone and Vail Resorts’ thinking.
“As technology advances, you can actually do more with less,” she said. “We’re seeing that we’re getting better at making snow year after year, and it requires fewer resources and makes really good snow.”
Vail Resorts has particularly ambitious climate goals. Over the past two fiscal years, the company has achieved 100% net renewable electricity supply at its 37 North American resorts. In addition, Vail aims to achieve net-zero operations by 2030, a metric that also includes projects such as landfilling and on-site fossil fuel burning.
For snowmaking, Vail properties like Keystone, like many others in the industry, have turned to ever-improving automated equipment. During my morning visit to Keystone, we stopped at the operations center at Mid-Mountain, where snowmaking controller Nick Daly sat in front of an interface showing snowmaking locations. Areas occupied by automated snowmaking guns equipped with weather stations are displayed in green if conditions are ripe for snowmaking, and in red if conditions are not ripe for snowmaking.
Armed with this information, Daly can turn equipment on as soon as conditions reach the feasible zone and turn them off as soon as conditions are no longer optimal. The machines are also able to turn on and off on their own.
Coe explained that with automation, Keystone can start the snowmaking system in minutes, whereas without automation it would take two hours to dispatch crews to the snowmaking station.
Automation helps mountains take better advantage of weather windows while reducing fuel consumption for crews on the mountain. It also produces high-quality snow more consistently, resulting in more efficient use of water and electricity.
Currently, about half of Keystone’s snowmaking stations are automated, but improvements are still in progress. In 2023, the mountain added snowmaking capabilities around its new Bergman Express lift, while also upgrading existing equipment on that portion of the mountain.
Keystone did not provide specific data on energy gains achieved through automation, but nearby Vail Mountain achieved an 85% efficiency increase in a 2019 project that included the addition of more than 400 automated snowmaking machines and 19 Miles of New Snowmaking Machine Vail Resort says the pipes will lift snowmaking operations higher on the mountain.
For Keystone and Vail Resorts more broadly, the snowmaking upgrades are a pillar of the strategy to build a weather-resistant business, Schifani said.
“If we can ensure that certainty when we open at Keystone in October that our guests can expect that they will be able to ski, they will continue to come and we will grow our industry, that is a win for everyone,” she explain.
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