The Art of Snowmaking

What an amazing start to the 2017 winter season, with a combined effort from both Mother Nature and Thredbo’s Snowmaking team, skiers and boarders enjoyed carving up High Noon, The Cruiser Area and Friday Flat across the long weekend.

With consistent below zero temps in the lead up to the weekend, it will allow for our snowmaking team to fire up the guns, allowing for a solid pre-season base for everyone to enjoy.

Snowmaking has been around for a while. The first snowmaker was developed in the 50’s from a garden hose, a 10 horsepower compressor and a spray-gun nozzle. For Thredbo, the art of snowmaking arrived in 1987, the same year the first mobile phone call was made in Australia.

The process of making snow has been fine-tuned over the past 20 years, but you still need the same two, very important components: water and cold air…we’re talking below 0 kind of cold air. Sounds easy enough right? Well not quite. Things get far more intricate when it comes to maximizing production and efficiency of man-made snow, so we’ll try to keep it short and sweet for you.

Water is compressed out from the snow guns, it’s crucial that a light mist is formed, fine enough to linger in the air for as long as possible. The longer the water is suspended in the cold air, the more likely it is to crystalize and turn into soft, white snow. The colder the temperature, the better the quality and higher the quantity of snow.

In 2006 Thredbo started automating their snowmaking system. Traditionally snow machines would continuously need to be re-aligned, requiring huge man power on the ground to manually aim the guns, as well as turn them on and off. This meant hardworking staff, who would work through the dark hours of the morning, in freezing cold temperatures, to tirelessly monitor and control the machines.

Still to this day it takes a hard working team to keep the 337 snow guns up and running during the small’s hours of the morning at Thredbo, but it’s with the help of these new developments in automated technology that we now have the most extensive snow making here in Australia.

Put simply, we wouldn’t be the resort we are today without this incredible infrastructure, it allows us to cover the mountain with a greater percentage of man made snow than any other resort in the country, making snow-making the lifeblood of Thredbo.