Grooming the snow at Lech, Picture Credit: Sepp Mallaun (c) LZTG
Snowmaking has been the big spend of the world's leading ski areas for more than a decade now as they battle, some critics say, to try to beat climate change, but in most cases it seems to be more about providing a snow guarantee from mid-autumn to early-spring so that skiers and boarders will feel confident to invest in pre-booking their holidays.
Now the leading Austrian resort of Lech, which next winter will celebrate 40 years of snowmaking, has published some interesting statistics on their snowmaking operation.
• In Lech Zürs there are 68 compressed air and 60 propeller snow cannons and 212 snow lances in use.
• The amount of snow generated per season is around 850.000m³.
• Snowmaking covers around 53% of the pistes in Lech Zürs.
• The maximum rate that water can be turned into snow is 800 litres per second.
• Snowmaking currently costs Lech just under EUR 6 million per season
• The energy used for snowmaking each season is, on average, one third of that used to run a 115-bed 4-star hotel so a small fraction of the energy used for resort accommodation.
Lech's Ski Lift Company has just financed a study by Prof. Ulrike Pröbstl from the Institute for Ecological Research in Etting-Polling in cooperation with AVEGA (working group on vegetation in the Alps) in to the effect of snowmaking in early autumn on flora and fauna.
The study found that snowcover was actually good for the preservation of flora, which had in any case died back by the end of summer on the slopes, and it was more important that snow melted away quickly in spring.
The current snowmaking guidelines from Lech's local Vorarlberg government permit snowmaking to start from 20 October, following a comprehensive approval procedure, and a recent decision means that artificial snow can be stockpiled in Lech from the first of October.
The Lech Ski Lifts are advocating an earlier start to snowmaking from the beginning of October. The would create a more flexible time frame for the activities required for snowmaking to ensure the season can start around the end of November.
The company says it stops snowmaking as early as possible in the spring, moving around any major drifts to cover slopes evenly, rather than allowing large deposits to remain piled up in places which take much longer to thaw and potentially damage new flora spring growth.