Page 14 - GP Periodical 2018-19

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Re-vegetation of our terrain was very successful this past summer on Race Grade, Minute Mile, Rogers, Lightning and various other locations throughout the property. We re-graded Lightning again this past summer along with a few other areas where required. New water bars were constructed on Rogers. We will continue with our annual grading program in order to reduce snowmaking costs and enable us to open these graded trails with less snow earlier in the season.
All of our lifts have received annual scheduled maintenance including visual inspection along with non-destructive testing of selected and required components. We will be installing kid stops on our Champlain lift for the coming season. The kid stops decrease the amount of space between the chair seat and the safety bar. They are spring loaded and will fold up out of the way for our larger passengers.
The snowmaking policy’s mandate continues to state that we start making snow mid-November, weather permitting. Our goal remains to have as much terrain open as possible, as early as possible. We just know that Mother Nature is going to help us along this year. Once again, we will focus on making snow wherever and whenever temperatures permit.
We will usually start to make snow at the top of the hill as it is colder at the summit and we are very temperature dependent. Once again, we will focus on making snow where temperatures permit. This means that the snowmaking operation will typically start at the top of Champlain, Rogers and Minute. By tracking snowmaking production with our automated system and hopefully not experiencing too many pipe breaks, we will be very close to our objective.
This past July we hired Robin Smith, a Snowmaking Consultant, as requested by the Membership. We spent a few days reviewing a number of years of data along with our current snowmaking practices here at the Peaks. We are pleased to say that our snowmaking practices are on par and the majority of recommendations for our success are practices we have already initiated. The Property & Planning Committee touched on the report at our AGM.
“I think The Peaks is doing a great job with snowmaking with the greatest challenge being your warm water in the early season. I think Snomax will really help combined with religious discipline on keeping high air and water pressures. You also have challenges others in the neighbourhood don’t have like much shiftier winds and very steep terrain. I applaud your migration to automation and I think is going to pay huge dividends in the future”.
Robin R. Smith - Snowconsult
We are always reviewing the current hill use and our needs. For the coming season we are going to designate Lightning