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All That Glitters Is Not Snow: How Ski Resorts Are Replicating Reality

Milder winters are forcing businesses to produce their own powder. Some are doing a pretty decent job of it

Over the past six years, I’ve lived in three towns that revolve around winter sports: Collingwood, Ontario, and its Blue Mountain Resort; Val-Morin in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains, with nearby Sommet Saint-Sauveur resort; and Bromont, Quebec, with its montagne d’expériences.

One of the first things I noticed, as someone who began learning how to snowboard in her late thirties, is how much of the snow wasn’t snow at all. Not exactly, at least. It’s not that the flakes aren’t real; they just don’t fall from the sky naturally.

As soon as weather conditions permit—that is to say, the sustained cold temperatures that usually arrive in late fall—the snowmaking begins at Bromont, montagne d’expériences and elsewhere. Snowmaking in ski resorts involves spraying water and pressurized air through specialized cannons to create artificial snow when there isn’t enough natural snowfall.

The Laurentians’ Mont Tremblant Ski Resort, the largest in the province with its 102 slopes, uses 1.3 million cubic metres of water annually to produce artificial snow—that’s about 520 Olympic-size swimming pools. And, though specific numbers are hard to come by, a large resort can consume about the same energy seasonally as thousands of homes do in a year.

Critics accuse the industry of clinging to an outdated model, of using too much energy for lifts, gondolas, grooming fleets, and too much water for snowmaking for something that isn’t exactly necessary. And as winters are getting shorter and the planet is warming, the industry’s having to churn out more and more fake snow.

So, my new (and expensive) hobby felt not merely........

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