Fire Up the Guns

In many parts of the country, snowboarding and skiing depend on a healthy supply of snow-making equipment–and there was plenty of it on display when I hit the slopes on Saturday.

Snowmaking is one of those “evil necessities.” Some snowmaking equipment, especially nozzle guns, can be quite loud. One such gun was positioned less than 50 feet away from a lift that I was using for quite a while. The blast was so loud that it drowned out the music on my iPod, even when I had it sent at 70 percent of the maximum volume.

And of course snowmaking equipment can make for whiteout conditions if the snow blows onto open slopes. That wasn’t the case when I took these pictures–though the photo below suggests it.

But on other occasions I have been pelted with the products of a snowgun. They coat your goggles and coat with something similar to what goes on your windshield when you drive through freezing rain.

One way to make having all the equipment around interesting is to note its variety. You have, for example, behemoths on wheels:

There are also pole-mounted varieties:

Another thing you can do is look for demarcations that tell you where the snowmaking equipment has made its mark, and where it hasn’t. For example, blowback can cause a snowgun to turn some parts of a tree white while the rest of it stays brown:

Finally, you might also anticipate what it would be like to ride through the fresh snow being piled up:

But here’s one you shouldn’t do: Ride through an area that is closed for snowmaking. “Poaching,” as it’s called, may give you access to forbidden fruit, but doing so can get you thrown off the hill. It’s also potentially more dangerous than riding on an open run, since there may be hoses or other obscured or hidden pieces of equipment lurking. As the photo above indicates–and as I witnessed live–poaching takes place nonetheless, adding to the outlaw, irresponsible reputation of snowboarding.