Solid Snowmaking Run

Brand new SMI Polecats running on lower Superior (formerly Chippewa) 12/1/2022

The cool temps held out overnight and allowed us to have a solid 48 hours of snowmaking across both resorts. We had 12 guns running at Black River Basin and 25 over at Jackson Creek Summit, maxing out the capability of our current systems. As of 9 o'clock this morning our teams had the guns shutdown and have started the process of draining lines, dragging hoses back to the shop and shuffling the guns around to prepare for the next run, which is looking good and long.

Colder temperatures move into the area this evening just before midnight. Unfortunately the cold weather is being delivered with strong gusty winds which will challenge our snowmakers through the next few days. Nevertheless the cold weather is a welcome change that will allow us to really pound out some piles over the next week or so.

Additional Terrain

Nastar trail(looker's left) and Shanty Boy(looker's right)12/1/2022

Lots of folks have been asking when we'll be opening up additional terrain at Black River Basin and we're nearly there. Our evening shift will be pulling guns off of Nastar and Shanty Boy this evening and will start to push the snow around to see if we're able to connect the dots. I took a ride in the cat last night with one of our groomers and it's looking likely that we'll be able to open at least the Nastar side and potentially the Shanty Boy side. Come morning I think we'll be riding some new terrain for the weekend. With 2-4 inches of fresh snow forecasted for tonight, tomorrow is shaping up to be a great day on the mountain. I hope to see you out here!

-Benjamin, GM

Comments

Concrete Time

With all of the snow melted and the hill dried out, the team from Ruotsala has focused their efforts on getting each of the tower foundations poured. The new lift will have 10 total towers along the line. Tower 1 sits immediately outside the bottom terminal, and tower 10 is just downhill from the top terminal. Those two tower bases will be excavated and poured alongside their respective terminal foundations. For now, our work has begun at tower 9, near the summit, and is progressing downhill as the access road gets built. The first step of each tower build is to excavate the tower location down to the precise elevation required according to the size and height of the footing. Once excavated and elevations are verified, soil bearing analysis must be completed to ensure the soil conditions are suitable for the new tower to be placed on. Our friends at Coleman Engineering out of Ironwood perform a series of tests in each excavation to evaluate the soil's ability to bear weight. Once

July Already?!

In the month since I last sat down to chronicle all the activity on the mountain, we have accomplished A LOT. The team from Ruotsalas has completed pouring concrete and backfilled the foundations for Towers 2-10. This leaves Tower 1 and all four terminal foundations to complete but is still a big milestone as it allows us to revegetate the access roads created to reach tower locations on the side of the hill. The rest of the pours are much more easily accessible via pre-existing and solid roadways, meaning rainy weather is much less of a threat to our forward progress. Tower 9 foundation is backfilled with grass already growing. -7/8/2023 With the Tower foundations substantially completed, the focus shifts to the top and bottom terminal locations. At the bottom, we are undertaking a massive regrading project to improve skier access to the lift from both the east and the west sides. The loading mound of the former triple lift has been completely removed and redistributed at the bottom

Extreme Makeover - Ski Resort Edition

As I walk around the mountains, it's starting to feel like I'm in the middle of one of those reality TV shows where a new home gets built in a week. In just over a month since our closing day, we've gotten started on too many projects to count in all areas of the resort. Without 100s of volunteers, we'll take a bit longer to get done. Still, I'm confident that Snowriver will feel like a totally different place when our guests return this fall. Here's a quick run-through of what we've been up to. Voyageur Express Preparation The mountain crew had a monumental task on their hands to dismantle, remove and scrap three chairlifts made up of over 5 miles of steel cable, 65 steel towers, 6 terminal structures, and 3 concrete vaults. Once all the towers had been cut and hauled up to the overflow lot, work began on torching them apart to allow them to be loaded onto trailers for the trip to the scrap yard. To date, we've hauled 160,000 pounds of metal to the sc

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