Quote:
Originally Posted by drjeff  (snip)....
When I heard about a year ago of Peak's 1st big fan gun purchase, I will admit to having some mixed feelings. The data of a higher conversion rate of water to snow appealed to me, especially given Mount Snow's current limited water supply, but I did have some flashbacks to the less than stellar product I grew up on in the 80's.
Then came this past November and my 1st experience with Mount Snow's "new technology" SMI fan guns. First off their noise level is very quiet, maybe 25% of the noise level of an air/water gun, to the point where you can actually stand right under one of towers that most of them are on while they're running and have a conversation at normal speech levels with someone! 2nd they make a much lighter, drier snow than most air water guns at most temperatures, and the fresh fan product actually skis like fresh powdery natural as opposed to the "styrofoamy" like texture that air/water guns put out the majority of the time. 3rd, the fans can through the snow a long way. Mount Snow had them this year on many wide trails, and even before the cats started pushing snow away from the fan guns towards the other side of the trails, the width of the skiing surface was close to twice as wide as on trails that didn't have fan guns this season(and that includes the trails that had air/water towers too). Lastly, the quantity of snow they produce. Plain and simple, on nights when they had fan guns going on some trails and air/water on others, the next AM it was clearly visible how much larger the piles from the fan guns were than from the air/water guns.
Bottom line, modern fan guns aren't anything like the fan guns of the 80's. They make a superior product to just about any air/water gun, and they do it more efficiently. If it wasn't for their $20,000 or so a piece price tag, I bet you'd see them in alot heavier use all across ski country. |
My wife and I own a quarter share at the Grand Summit and put in many days per season at Snow. We totally agree with Dr. Jeff. It's not imagined either. Many times we'd be heading down a trail saying, "the snow is really great here", not knowing why, only to see the fan guns further down. This has happened a number of times. The snow clearly skis better.
I also don't think the noise factor is given enough weight. I can't stand to be on a trail with the older guns. The noise is totally against the whole skiing mindset (at least mine). I think the fan guns are great for the noise reduction alone. In the same vein, I also can't stand it when mountains, in a lame attempt to be hip, start blasting music over crappy speakers. I prefer silence to any music, but if they can't invest in great speakers, then give it a rest.