Spring at Snowriver

It is officially spring at Snowriver, but while the calendar calls for spring we still have TONS of snow on the mountain. After a few additional feet over the past week, we've now crossed the 200" mark for this season. This is just about two feet more than our annual average for snowfall. This means we'll have great spring skiing conditions right up through the end of the season.

Our plan remains to close down the Jackson Creek Summit side after April 2nd. This early closure will allow us to begin the removal of the Original Double to make way for construction of the new Voyageur Express which is slated to begin May 1st. Over at Black River Basin, we plan to keep things rolling through Easter Sunday. We'll run the lifts from Friday the 7th through Sunday the 9th from 9am-4pm to finish off the season. If conditions and skier demand support reopening for a bonus weekend, we may reopen on April 15th and 16th. Stay tuned to our email newsletter and social media channels for an announcement as that weekend approaches.

Road Trip

We were in need of a large, solid spool to store the haul rope from the Original Double on until it can be reinstalled later this summer on the Bear Creek lift. I knew my friends over at Giants Ridge had one in storage, so I phoned a friend to see if I'd be able to borrow it. Thankfully they agreed and I was able to go pick it up yesterday. The ski industry is such a neat community of people willing to help each other out. It's one of the things I like the most about working in it. Plus it was a great opportunity for me to stop in and visit with all of my former coworkers over there.

Having this spool on hand when we go to remove the haul rope (industry term for cable) from the Original Double will allow us to save it for reinstallation. It was just put on around 10 years ago and has many, many good years of life left in it. Rather than sending it off to scrap like the others, we're going to reinstall it to replace the rope on the Bear Creek lift which still has its original haul rope from when it was installed in 1987.

Triple Time

Triple chairs awaiting their new owners to take them home- 3/23/2023

The mountain crew finished removing the chairs from the triple lift this afternoon. Another step in the right direction. If you haven't bought your very own, hop over to our auction site and place a bid! Next, we'll get to work on taking the Ts off the West T-Bar which should go pretty quickly and then we'll only have the chairs on the double to contend with after closing day. Once all the chairs are off the line, we have a contractor coming up to assist us in removing the cables from each of the lifts. With over 4 1/2 miles of steel cable totaling over 50,000 pounds to wind up, we sure have our work cut out for us.

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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

Excitement in the Air

The Big Day After months of work by countless individuals, the time finally came to get the new towers out of the parking lot and stand them up on their foundations. We considered using a conventional crane to lift the towers into place, but the steep terrain would have made it very difficult to move the towers into position and extensive excavation and dozing would have been required to build a crane pad at each tower site. Being that Lutsen is building a lift this summer as well, we choose to partner to split the cost of mobilizing a helicopter from out west to make things a little more efficient for both of us. Saturday, July 22nd, after assisting our friends across the lake with pouring concrete for the new Raptor Express, Brian from Timberline Helicopters pointed his UH 60 Blackhawk across the lake and headed straight for Snowriver. He and his crew touched down here in the main parking lot just after the storm clouds cleared, making for a perfect dust-free landing. The Timberline

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