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At Altitude

If you make it, they will come.

That's what administrators at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area are expecting as they put the finishing touches on a $2.3 million snowmaking system, ending a seven-year wait.

Until now, A-Basin was one of the few Colorado ski areas without artificial snowmaking. In an extended process of permit applications, lawsuits by environmental groups and appeals, A-Basin made the case that it couldn't compete financially by relying on Mother Nature to set its opening and closing dates.

"The snowmaking makes a base so we can have a consistent opening and have a consistent closing," says A-Basin spokeswoman Leigh Hierholzer. "We're really excited that after seven years of studies and permits and everything we've been through that it is finally coming to fruition."

Call it sour grapes, but in the past A-Basin built a reputation on its 100 percent natural snow, which provides a better skiing experience, if and when it snows.

Hierholzer says 125 acres targeted for snowmaking are strictly beginner and intermediate terrain. The snowmaking guns aren't anywhere near the renown expert runs off the Palavicinni lift and the hike-to East Wall.

That's a mixed blessing.

Last season, the East Wall never received enough snowfall to open to the public. While the snowmaking will help A-Basin enter the publicity race of first-to-open, the terrain the resort is known for remains at the whims of the weather.

All this comes at too high a cost for the environment, says Rocky Smith of the watchdog group Colorado Wild, which sued the Forest Service for granting the snowmaking permit.

A-Basin will draw water from the North Fork of the Snake River, which will diminish dilution of the severely polluted main stem of the Snake River downstream of the resort.

"From A-Basin's point of view — 'We just can't be competitive' — that is a legitimate point, but that shouldn't allow them to increase pollution in a creek that already doesn't meet the Clean Water Act," Smith says.

A-Basin officials contend, and the courts agree, that with water diversions kept within the limits of the permit, the slight rise in metals concentration in the Snake River will not have a significant impact.

Snowmakers expect to start testing the equipment in a couple of weeks, with snowmaking fully operational by the end of the month.

A-Basin chief operating officer Jim Gentling jokes about the irony of recent early-season snowfall.

"So far it looks like we won't need a snowmaking system this year," he says. "Our natural snowmaking system is working great."

November 19, 2002

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