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July 10

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22.01.2010

Snow King Mountain: Final preparations before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver

Snow King Mountain in Jackson Hole Wyoming, a classic Cowboy town in the Western US is host to several National ski teams preparing for the winter Olympic Games in Vancouver Canada. US women’s technical team, French men and women’s technical team, Finland’s men and women technical team will all enjoy the great TechnoAlpin snow at Snow King Mountain. A final International test race will be held before the athletes are traveling to Vancouver.

Snow King Mountain is celebrating its 70th anniversary with a fully automatic snowmaking system delivered by TechnoAlpin last fall. The system has several M18A tower mounted and mobile fan guns as well as the powerful A30 Lances.

TechnoAlpin Area Manager Karlheinz Terrabona and CEO of TechnoAlpin USA-Canada, Geir Vik, recently inspected the system and had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Fortune, the director of recreation and the mountain manager Adam Shankland who has worked as a snowmaker at Snow King for 12-years.

What is the opinion of the average skier in Jackson Hole, the talk on the town?
Adam: The snow at Snow King is fantastic this year. I am frequently complimented in the grocery store and at parties. People are thanking me for bringing these great skiing conditions to the mountain, although it is truly due to the great snow guns.
Tom: Even before the snowmaking season started, visiting hikers and locals looked at the TA equipment in the parking lot with excitement. The local newspaper took pictures and wrote stories in the anticipation of the upcoming season which created great publicity for the resort.
When the snowmaking season started the huge piles of snow made by the M18”s provided sledding hills for the children.

How did the automatic snow guns improve your operation?
Adam: The ATASS (Automatic TechnoAlpin Snowmaking Software) enabled us to operate the pump station with only one operator.
It made startup easier, less labor intensive, enabled the snowmakers to start up the system in matter of minutes.
Tom: We reduced our snowmaking staff for the season by 25%. We also eliminated the need for snow inducers which saved us alone $20,000.00 this season.

The automation was a big change for you after 11 years with a manual snowmaking system?
Adam: We are always looking for better and more efficient ways to do things, so when we had this opportunity we jumped on it. Both snowmaking supervisors and myself were not afraid to try all the automatic functions. The system made it easier for us to use our water efficient. We purchase city drinking water so it is critical that we don’t loose water due to leaching. The guns produced complete frozen snow crystals at any snow quality setting, so there is no need for curing before we can groom it out and ski on it say’s the lead groomer with 18 years of grooming experience at different ski resorts.

What is your opinion of the Lance guns?
Adam: We were very skeptical of the new “stick guns” since we own several which have not worked well for us in the past and are now retired. The A30 Lance’s are amazing! The volume of snow they produced and the quality of the snow was incredible. These low energy guns (44 cfm of air) covered large open areas for us and made the same great snow as the fan guns.

How would you summarize the season so far?
Tom: We had some challenging weather this fall trying to build up the snow base for this season opening race December 12th. The TechnoAlpin equipment enabled us to pull of these races due to the consistent snow quality through the temperature variations. We now have a great base which will carry us through the season. We have booked allot of skiing events for the remaining season which we can pull off with confidence and also fill our bed base which will improve the bottom line for the corporation.

www.snowkingmountain.com

The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXI Olympic Winter Games or the 21st Winter Olympics, will be held on February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with some events held in the resort town of Whistler and Richmond nearby. The 2010 Winter Olympics will be the third Olympics hosted by Canada, and the first by the province of British Columbia. Previously, Canada was home to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta.

www.vancouver2010.com