Burke Mountain has secured permission from state regulators to use a giant tarp system to store snow on its race courses over the summer. It’s a system known as “snow farming” in the ski industry.
The Northeast Kingdom ski area says it's an effort to extend and protect the training season for racers at Burke Mountain Academy as the climate changes.
“Both organizations continue to view it as a long-term investment in the future of ski racing at Burke,” said mountain spokesperson Melissa Gullotti.
Bear Den Operations Company and Burke Mountain Academy were granted an Act 250 permit for the project on Friday.
"This technology is well-established in Europe and has proven to be a reliable way to secure early season skiing while creating efficiencies in snowmaking."Melissa Gullotti, Burke Mountain Ski Area spokesperson
The project would consist of one or two piles of manmade snow, up to 20 feet high and 300 feet long. The piles would live on two existing trails, and be covered by an insulated tarp.
“This technology is well-established in Europe and has proven to be a reliable way to secure early season skiing while creating efficiencies in snowmaking,” Gullotti said.
The idea is to make snow when conditions are suitable — when it’s cold and dry — and pile it into a mound, then cover that mound to shield it from the sun and rain.
Then in the fall, the ski area can spread the snow across the trail where it’s been stored, creating an even run for skiers before the weather is consistently cold enough to make snow.
Burke’s Act 250 application cites an example at a ski area in Finland, but the practice is becoming more common in the United States, too, as climate change makes snow less reliable.
Ski areas in Wisconsin, Idaho and Utah are also trying the technology. In Vermont, Craftsbury Outdoor Center has experimented with snow farming, too.
The Craftsbury ski area has kept meticulous records of its snowfall over the last 30 years or so, and those records show a trend.
“It’s pretty clear that we lose about three quarters of an inch of snow a year. Of course that varies, but over the 29 years, we’ve lost about 20 inches,” Craftsbury co-director Dick Dreissigacker told Vermont Edition in January.
Dreissigacker said this all comes as skiers have ever higher standards for ski conditions. “We’re sort of fighting, trying to give a better product, but with less resource of natural snow,” he said.
In response, Craftsbury partnered with researchers at the University of Vermont starting in 2017 to experiment with the best material to cover snow for storage. The researchers looked into combinations of sawdust, wood chips, foam and space blankets.
Ski areas have long covered snow with sawdust or wood chips to stretch their snow supply. The approach is reminiscent of how New Englanders used to harvest ice from frozen lakes and pack it in sawdust to save it through the summer months prior to the advent of electric refrigerators.
Researchers at Craftsbury Outdoor Center ultimately found that covering snow piles in about a foot of packed wood chips, with a white blanket over the top, was effective. In 2019 they managed to keep about 60% of the snow they stored this way through October.
Burke would like to use a technology called Snow Secure to cover its mounds — essentially thick polystyrene mats.
The Finnish company claims that snow farming can help resorts cut energy and water consumption for snowmaking by 70% and reduce snowmelt to 10-20%.
Skiing in Vermont is a $1.6 billion industry, and climate change poses an existential threat to the state’s ski areas. Absent major steps to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, Vermont’s ski season is expected to shrink by a month by 2080 — a scenario that researchers at the University of Vermont say wouldn’t be viable for most small ski areas in the state.
Gullotti expects the mountain will start farming snow in spring 2027.
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