It's that time of year when I wish we could save some of the snow from this season for next season. There's a dense snowpack at upper elevations and wouldn't it be great if we could save just some of it for next year.
Some resorts in Europe have been doing that, piling up snow and covering it with white, insulated blankets or sawdust to save it until next season. Levi in Finland is perhaps best known for doing this (see https://www.wired.com/story/ski-resorts-are-stockpiling-snow-to-get-through-warm-winters/). Now Sun Peaks Resort has become the first resort in Canada to do it.
Per the video above, they invested $170,000 (presumably CDN) for geotextile blankets to preserve snow for next season to use it in late fall and early winter.
I don't know enough about resort economics, snowmaking costs, or snow energy balance to evaluate whether or not this would work here, but I'm intrigued. Beyond costs, one advantage of this approach is that the preserved snow would be available even if snowmaking conditions were unreliable, such as might occur during a warm fall.
At issue is how well this would work at a lower latitude. I am aware of the use of geotextiles in the Alps to preserve glaciers, but am unaware of tests at at our latitude. One could imagine using terrain maps to evaluate the total incoming solar radiation during the warm season, storing the snow in areas that minimize the total incoming solar radiation due to favorable aspects and shading by the surrounding topography.
At Alta, could you stockpile snow at the base of Ballroom or below the shoulder traverse to cover Main Street next season?
This post made me interested in what Jim and his readers think about environmental impact of skiing. Snow harvesting is a fantastic technology. But consider shipping plastic from Finland and machines pushing around snow. Every time I jump in my truck— yep— and drive my skis or bike or sneakers or kayak to a mountain, sometimes carpooling but most often not, a sting of conscience hits me as I realize what a lavish, privileged mountain sport lifestyle I lead. Even though my overall impact is probably less than most Americans, I’m also more aware of how out of proportion it is compared to that of most people in the world. How do you all frame it? Party on while the world burns?
ReplyDeleteI suspect the biggest environmental impacts from skiing are carbon emissions due to transportation (including air and ground transport), snowmaking, lift operations, etc. There's also various types of pollution as well as the environmental footprint of the resort itself. Snow farming and storage probably is pretty small compared to the transport part, and possibly compared to snowmaking, assuming those are heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
DeleteConcerning how I frame it all, that requires a much longer post than I can write here. Maybe I'll discuss this in the future.
Unless I'm mistaken about something, skiing aside, you impact the climate simply by existing because you eat food, breathe air, and expel waste. The most logically consistent thing you could do to assuage a guilty climate conscience is to be a climate martyr (and/or take many others down with you). Since most of us wouldn't advocate for that, there must be other factors guiding our moral principles besides climate absolutism, and so our decisions to recreate in the mountains are a result of balancing all of those factors (unless we're just ignoring the impact of our actions, as I'm sure many do). For instance, if you think that you are entitled to life, then it follows that you are probably also entitled to a degree of quality of life. How everyone balances quality of life against climate responsibility is a great topic for discussion, but the mere act of recreating from time to time need not cause too much dismay just because some people in the present/future world might suffer (I hope that doesn't come across as callous, because I don't mean to minimize suffering either).
DeleteAnother benefit of covering snow that's specific to the Wasatch might be to protect the snow surface from dust. Managing the albedo would be tricky with regards to when the geotextile is installed on the slope and when our snowpack gets most "dusted."
ReplyDeleteScientific validity aside, I feel like there might be issues with storing water in the form of snow, that would have otherwise melted and become drinking water in the canyon on leased land from the USFS. Perhaps someone that knows more about the water rights balance up there could chime in on this. The resorts are allotted a certain amount of water for snowmaking purposes. Perhaps Snowbird would have less hoops to jump through due to the private land much of the resort resides on
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting question pertaining to water rights and law. Well outside my area of expertise!
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