Upcoming winter will be ski area’s last without snowmaking
Pajarito Mountain ski area plans to be making snow by winter 2009-10. “We’re fullspeed ahead,” said Tom Long, general manager of Pajarito Mountain, the last ski area in New Mexico without snowmaking equipment.
The mountain is coming off its second-straight season of consistent snow conditions. Over the previous eight winters, however, spotty snowfall brought financial strain. For four of those eight seasons, Pajarito was open for less than a week or not at all.
“That’s probably our biggest motivator (for snowmaking),” Long said. “You have this facility that’s sitting here, and this community loves its skiing.”
Ken Gillespie — president of the Los Alamos Ski Club, which owns and operates Pajarito Mountain — said those slow-to-nonexistent ski years took a toll.
“We recognized this is a necessary step,” Gillespie said. “We’ve got a great product, and when we aren’t open, we lose that exposure.”
Long had originally hoped the equipment could be churning by this winter. But logistics pushed it back.
“It’s the paperwork process of executing any project that’s slowing us down,” he said.
One issue was the construction of a 10 million-gallon pond at the top of the hill, from which water would be drawn that would be converted into snow. Initial designs for a lesswasteful hole that used dug-up material had to be scrapped because of where it would need to be placed. With help from state engineers, the pond has been redesigned.
“Instead of building the pond this summer like we hoped, it got delayed,” Long said.
The company TechnoAl- pin is making the needed mechanical equipment, Long said.
This is all a massive undertaking for a club-run and -owned, nonprofit mountain. Long doesn’t know exactly how much it will cost, except to say “several million dollars.”
“We raise it through tickets sales — daily ticket sales and season passes,” he said. “It’s a self-sustaining business.”
For patrons of an oldschool mountain entering its 51st year of operation, there was very little convincing necessary to start subverting Mother Nature.
“There’s a pioneering spirit about skiing here with some guys who have been here since the (first atomic) bomb was made (at nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory),” Long said. “But the community understands the need for this.”
Technological advances also help.
“It used to be you could tell a difference,” Gillespie said of real versus manufactured snow. “Now, with the new grooming techniques, and if you manage it correctly, it provides a very nice surface. It’s not really distinguishable.”
Essentially, Pajarito has bought itself a consistent opening date and peace of mind for season-pass buyers who have been burned in some recent years.
But there’s still this season to get through.
“You never count it until it’s on the ground,” Long said. “Last winter was really nice to us. Hopefully, this next winter will be good. The squirrels are gathering the same amount of nuts.”
