Above: Portable snow-making units in operation in Sixte Fer à Cheval.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, top resorts now need to offer a lot more than good snow conditions. Without them, though, there’s no skiing, so investment in new and upgraded snowmaking infrastructure is steadily increasing. To find out how it works in a major ski resort I visited Flaine in the Grand Massif, one of the pioneers of artificial snowmaking.

Artificial snow-making, or ‘neige de culture’, can kick-start a season by laying a firm bed of snow before the real stuff arrives. But there’s a snag. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that projected water droplets are never going to transform themselves into snow flakes (technically ‘micro-crystals’) unless air temperatures are already below freezing. So only higher altitude resorts and those with an intemperate micro-climate (it happens) can benefit.

The Snow Factory

In 1973 Flaine pioneered artificial snow-making, and now has one of the most extensive and sophisticated systems in the French Alps. Large purpose-built reservoirs supply a central usine à neige (literally ‘snow factory’) which then pumps both water and air at high pressure through a network of underground pipes to batteries of snow-canon sited around the mountain. The entire network is then computer-managed under the watchful eye of the factory operator.

Above, L-R: A sectioned snow cannon showing the inner nozzle whose water is vaporised by compressed air passing around it; nozzles ready for deployment.

He’s not the only one. Environmentalists, never the greatest enthusiasts for large ski developments, are also monitoring the expansion and evolution of artificial snow-making, which has become a far more advanced science than most skiers realise. Snow is picky stuff — projected droplets need to be between 0.2 and 0.8mm in diameter to be potential snowflake parents. Both fixed and portable snow-canon are able to provide just that, but once the mixture leaves the nozzle it can take a second or two to crystallise. Or not. Natural snow forms when droplets collect around dust and other particles present in the atmosphere (a process known as heterogeneous nucleation). Snow canon, on the other hand, need help if their precise droplets are not going to simply produce ice particles (homogeneous nucleation).

Artificial Insemination For Snow

One answer is to add a bacterial protein known as Pseudomonas syringae to the water supply. The result, even with temperatures barely touching zero, is near-instantaneous crystallisation, to create the perfect artificial snow. According to York Snow Inc., whose Snowmax Snow Inducer has been widely-adopted by the North American ski industry, the bacteria are perfectly harmless, being already present in vast numbers in the natural environment. Just to be sure, though, they’re mostly ‘neutralised’ during the manufacturing process. Europe, on the other hand, has been less eager to adopt the additive approach, unconvinced by claims of zero environmental impact.

Above, L-R: Computerised management monitors individual cannon as well as the complete system; high-pressure pump unit in Flaine’s impressive ‘usine à neige’.

In any case, there’s now another, simpler option. Newly-developed catalytic systems offer similar dramatic improvements in snow quality, and latest generation snow canon require only ambient, rather than compressed air. Between them, these developments could halve operational energy costs - or for the same running cost - double the terrain equipped with snowmaking. The downside (each canon requires its own 1,000 Euro catalytic unit) is hefty capital investment in new hardware, although if electricity prices continue to rise the present four-year break-even period will shorten. Either way, artificial snow-making is expensive, running costs generally far outstripping those more visible consumers of energy, the ski lifts.