The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Snowmaking focused on Silver Queen next
By Kendra Walker
Last week’s storms gave Crested Butte Mountain Resort a much-needed boost to open more terrain this week, with the Paradise Lift opening up Wednesday.
However, given the forecast for the next couple of weeks, CBMR will continue to rely on its snowmaking operations to open up more terrain as the mountain gears up for the holidays.
According to CBMR’s director of mountain ops Steve Duke, snowmaking is currently focused on the upper mountain trails right now, including Upper Keystone and Upper Park, with the team aiming to open the Silver Queen Lift next.
The resort began snowmaking in late October this season, and it typically makes snow through November and December. Snowmaking is prioritized to high-traffic and high-need areas to ensure that key runs, lifts and base zones are ready and open first. According to Duke, the snowmaking team aims for a 12- inch base on the runs where they make snow.
Duke explained that wet bulb temperatures have the biggest impact on snowmaking. “Wet-bulb temperature is important to snowmaking because it shows how quickly water droplets can freeze in the air. It combines air temperature and humidity, so it gives a more accurate picture than ambient temperature alone. When the wet-bulb temperature is low, snow can be made efficiently and when it’s high, snowmaking becomes difficult or impossible, even if the air temperature is below freezing.”
CBMR has water rights to the East River for its snowmaking operations, where the minimum bypass flow requires that flow in the East River not fall below 7 cubic feet per second (cfs) during snowmaking. This restriction allows drawdown to 6 cfs for up to 15 days in December.
“We use a formula that compares water flow readings from the East River gauge at Almont to flow readings further upstream near the resort pump house,” said Duke.
“This formula helps determine how much water can be diverted to the resort for snowmaking each day, while still making sure that at least 7 cubic feet per second of water remains in the river. The amount of water available to the resort is dependent upon on the readings at the East River gauge.”
He continued, “We monitor the East River at Almont using a USGS gauge. Once this gauge ices over, we rely on a third-party water engineering company to measure the flow at our East River pump house.”
Duke said he did not have an exact number, but that current flows are very similar to this time last season. According to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources website, the latest data shows the East River reading at 55.4 cfs below Cement Creek and 74.4 cfs at Almont.
