Mount Snow in Dover, VT was founded in 1954. Since then, the resort has gone from the old gondola lift and a reliance on natural snowfall to bubble chairlifts and an enviable snowmaking system. The first snowmaking pump at Mount Snow was installed in 1964 and before the West Lake Project, it had been 30 years since the last snowmaking upgrade.
Westlake is a 120 million gallon reservoir, the project took 3 pumphouses to get the water from the reservoir up onto the hill to use for snowmaking. Brendan Ryan, VP of Projects, details that Mount Snow was “a 40-50 thousand CFM system in the past with diesel air, running at about 6,500 gallons a minute. Now we’re running 17,000 CFM and averaging 9,000 gallons a minute out of the Westlake System.”
- The snowmaking team, led by Randy Barrows who Ryan calls ‘the best snowmaking in the world’ recalls that “Everyone used to ask ‘how much air do you have, now it’s how much water do you have?” Mount Snow is able to run 500 guns in 24 hours to resurface, and the system has made an impressive impact in their success early season. “Snowmaking has been the backbone of our company, and we’ll continue to invest in snowmaking,” states Ryan.
- During the winter for 2015-2016, Mount Snow was pumping 6,500 gallons per minute and using 32,000 CFM of air.
Since the West Lake expansion, Mount Snow is now pumping over 11,800 gallons per minute using 17.000 CFM of air. This represents a 81% increase in water capacity and a 47% reduction in air capacity.
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