An investment in snowmaking by Mansfield Winter Academy and Stowe Mountain Resort should get racers on the hill earlier in the season to train and race.
Photo courtesy of Gordon Miller/Stowe Reporter
This story by Tommy Gardner was first published by The Stowe Reporter on Sept. 12.
Mount Mansfield Academy could add an extra month and a half to its ski season as it partners with Stowe Mountain Resort and pumps a bunch of money into increased snowmaking capabilities in the areas the academy uses for racing and training.
The upgrade includes a new snowmaking pump that aims to deliver early-season snow — as early as Nov. 1, according to the resort — at its Main Street race trail on Spruce Peak.
That’s much earlier than normal, and earlier is better for the student-athletes at a private school that has graduated generations of ski racers, including Olympians and World Cup athletes, according to academy Executive Director Igor Vanovac.
“Normally, we end up being in the middle of January up on Main Street, and this is the goal to give us that four or five, six weeks of extra season back home,” Vanovac said. “Because our competitors are ahead of us with that.”
The gains for the academy athletes are also gains for the general ski and ride public. Stowe High School athletes have, in recent years, seen races canceled at the start of the season for lack of snow. Last season, the Raiders hosted their first home meet on Main Street in several years.
The upgrades will not affect the resort’s regular opening process, which typically involves laying enough snow to access terrain from the gondola and Four Runner quad on the Mt. Mansfield side of the resort in time for opening day, usually around mid-to-late-November, followed by snowmaking at other parts of the resort.
Shannon Buhler, Stowe Mountain Resort’s former vice president who recently took the top job at Keystone Resort in Colorado, said, in a statement, “As Vermont’s highest peak, ski racing is in our DNA, and we are excited to help grow the next generation of ski racers.”
The resort, during and before its 2017 acquisition by Vail Corporation, has invested millions into its snowmaking capabilities, and Vanovac said it “is probably one of the best systems in the country.” But the race area hasn’t traditionally been among the early areas of the resort to receive coverage, and the Sensation Quad lift that serves that area is among the last to be powered on for the season.
Typically, the academy athletes travel around the world in search of snow. They were in Colorado in May and will be in Switzerland soon, with perhaps some indoor skiing in Oslo.
They recently spent two weeks in Chile, where Vanovac saw his old pal, and former academy instructor, Noah Dines, on his quest for 3 million vertical feet.
“I told him to go get a job,” Vanovac laughed.
The academy athletes will still do those trips for the experience, but the extra month and a half is a boon for the training, and for the prospects of hosting events earlier in the race calendar.
The academy — formerly known as the Mount Mansfield Ski Club — along with the resort have been tied together at the hip for 90 years, ever since the first trails were cut on Vermont’s highest peak in the 1930s. The club first held races on the Mansfield side of the resort, initially on North Slope and then Hayride, before moving over to Spruce Peak and Main Street.
Vanovac said the academy is investing in the extra infrastructure needed to bring the extra snowmaking capacity to the Main Street racecourse, as well as contributing to the extra labor needed to run the snowmaking and lift operations.
He didn’t say specifically how much the academy is investing, but the needed pump runs a couple hundred thousand dollars, and there will be significant labor costs to run it year after year.
“You could say it’s a substantial amount of dollars that the academy is raising and wanting to invest in the future of ski racing,” he said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Resort, academy partner to make early snow in Stowe.