The icy truth about Olympic snowmaking

Nearly every crystal at the Beijing Games will come out of a machine.
Then the hard part begins.

By Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha 

Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. EST

This year, the Olympic venues in China will be missing something: natural snow.

Many Winter Games, including the past three in PyeongChang, Sochi and Vancouver, have made heavy use of snowmakers for this nonnegotiable
necessity. In Beijing, machines are churning out every inch of the white stuff for the 66 medal events that require it.

But spreading snow onto a world-class ski run is not like slathering cream cheese onto a bagel. It requires precision in every step, from the air-and-
water mixture in the snow guns to the last team of groomers on skis who smooth away remaining imperfections before showtime.

Three key ingredients for

snow
The typical cold, dry February weather in the mountains near Beijing provides little natural snow but creates excellent conditions for producing and
sustaining machine-made snow. It is made from compressed air and water without the chemical additives often needed in warmer, wetter areas, said
Michael Mayr, a representative from Italy-based TechnoAlpin, which won the roughly $22 million contract to provide the snow-making system at
this year’s Olympics.

1. Water
China estimated in 2019 that snow-making for the Games would require about 49 million gallons of water in an area where environmentalists have
sounded alarms about water scarcity.

A network of pipes and pumping stations was built to link reservoirs to the new Alpine skiing venue at Yanqing, which rarely gets more than a
dusting of natural snow. Covering an area of 200 feet by 200 feet with six inches of snow requires more than 74,600 gallons of water.

2. Air
Snow guns use compressed air to break water into tiny droplets. Different air-to-water ratios produce different types of snow, from wispy (75 percent
air) to waterlogged (50 percent air). Fan-style guns have onboard weather stations that adjust settings automatically to the percentage the
snowmakers need.

Compressed That breaks

air is pumped the water into
into fan guns tiny droplets

Air
 Water

Olympic snowmakers are

using 272 high-capacity,
propeller-driven fan guns
(some mobile and some
mounted on towers)…

5.75 ft

…and 82 lance-style guns

38 ft that put out much less snow
Max. but are easier to use on
height narrow slopes.

3. Cold
The ideal conditions for snow-making are a temperature below 15 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity below 25 percent.

In those conditions
droplets freeze as
they fall …

… and create
a pile of snow.

Unlike the delicate hexagons created when natural water droplets fall from the clouds, machine-made snowflakes only have time to form crystal
blobs before they hit the ground. They may be denser and are not as pretty to look at, but by the time flakes of either kind — or a mix of both kinds —
are processed into an Olympic course, there is little difference.

NATURAL MACHINE-MADE
 ‘Perfect’ is under the ski
of the beholder
Professional snowmakers say there is no ideal Olympic snow, just ideal snow for a particular sport.

Cross-country solid snow. Freestyle moguls. Alpine ice.

Photos by Lisa Leutner/AP, Lisi Niesner/Reuters and Giovanni Mari Pizzato/AP.

Cross-country skiers want a solid, level base with a packed-powder surface that provides better grip for skating and climbing — although top skiers
are used to a little ice as well, said Bill Pierce, venue manager at Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Utah, which hosted the 2022 U.S. championships.

Freestyle skiers and snowboarders prefer firm runs and fairly soft landing areas, Mayr, the TechnoAlpin rep, said. Mogul skiers like powdery bumps
with fast lines between them, according to Mike Solimano, president and general manager of Killington Resort in Vermont, which hosts freestyle
competitions and World Cup Alpine races.

And Alpine skiers want a vertical ribbon of ice, Solimano said, the opposite of the light, fluffy stuff snowmakers create most of the year for
recreational skiers.

Snowmaking is mostly concentrated in two mountain areas and the big air venue in Beijing.

C H I N A Detail

Zhangjiakou 85 miles from Beijing

Most of snow sports, such as
freestyle skiing, snowboarding,
cross-country and ski jumping

Yanqing
Yanqing 48 miles from Beijing
Alpine
Alpine skiing
skiing events
events

H E B EI
B E I JING

Beijing
Beijing
Big
Big air
air venue
venue
 25 MILES
T I A NJIN

The downhill course at Yanqing is named Rock, and that’s what the snow will probably feel like.

Top downhill skiers often reach speeds of more than 80 mph as they careen down a narrow ribbon of ice. It is not for the faint of heart or leg, said ski
historian Seth Masia, of the International Skiing History Association.

“If you’re not on skis that were specially handmade for racing and tuned by a World Cup-level ski tuner, you wind up in a 40 mile-an-hour side slip,”
Masia said. “It’s really hard to drive an edge into that stuff. It’s not a fun experience if you don’t have the right gear and can’t leg press 500 pounds.”

Legendary course designer Bernhard Russi described his Yanqing creation as “very demanding” and “a much steeper downhill than everybody was
thinking” in a recent Reuters interview.

Until practice runs begin on Thursday, we’ll have to take his word for it, because no world-class athletes have skied the course. Pre-Olympic races
that typically occur at a new venue were canceled because of the pandemic, so only a few lower-level Chinese athletes have competed on a
significantly shortened version.

Masia said that while the world’s best skiers will adapt, no previous Olympic course has been as unfamiliar to athletes as this one or has had a similar
pattern of steep and flat terrain.

“Looks like the course starts very steep, then flat, then quite steep but not as steep, then runout to finish is very flat,” he said. “So racers have to have
a really strong technical turn to negotiate the gates on some very steep pitches, but they also have to carry their speed across these long, flat sections.
That usually favors the bigger guys who come into the flats with more momentum.”

Masia also wonders how the skiers will fare coming off the course’s five jumps in a region known for blustery wind with few forgiving snowbanks
outside the fences. “If there’s a high crosswind, it could just blow you right off the course,” he said. “And there really isn’t a lot of snow to land on.”

Creating a ‘bulletproof’
downhill
Industry lingo for the ideal Alpine competition surface is “bulletproof,” meaning it is as hard as a hockey rink.

Russi said the course that most resembles the Rock course might be the famously challenging Birds of Prey at Beaver Creek Resort in Colorado,
which he also designed.

Here’s how the surface of that course is created, according to Gary Shimanowitz, who as vice president of mountain operations helps oversee the
team that prepares Birds of Prey for World Cup races.

1. Make wet snow and spread it out.

Snow guns are set to churn out snow that is half water. “You can make a snowball out of the snow we make and then squeeze it, and water will come
out,” Shimanowitz said.

In steep areas, specialized groomers called winch cats move up and down slopes using winches tethered by steel cables to anchors in the ground.
2. 'Track pack’ it.
Snowcats run over the newly spread snow to tamp it down. Olympic snowmakers plan to have a roughly 3-foot-deep base on all courses.

3. Just add water.

Groomers will let the snow rest for 24 hours and spray the surface with water. (Another method is injecting water into the snow; Solimano does that
with Killington’s slalom course.) At this point, the snow is the consistency of a Slurpee.

4. Mix it up.
In a process called “slush-tilling,” grooming machines use blades to till the snow to break up chunks and evenly distribute it in an even, slushy layer.

5. Let it freeze.
“If you can get to that nice, hard, consistent surface — that’s what the racers are looking for,” Shimanowitz said. Soft spots could slow them down and
create hazards. “You don’t want soft spots, hard spots, soft spots, hard spots — you want it to be hard and consistent, the same all the way from the
top to the bottom.”

6. Smooth it out.
Finally, teams of skiers called “slip crews” or “side slippers” slide down the frozen course like human Zambonis, their edges smoothing remaining
ripples and make the surface as hard and glassy as possible. The more you “slip” a course, the firmer it becomes. Slip crews also quickly smooth ruts
during races, so look for them standing ready along the course.

The goal is for the surface to be the same for the last skier of the day as it is for the first.

After all the processing, there’s not much difference between natural and machine-made snow for Olympians.

“While they are formed differently,” said Soldier Hollow’s Pierce, “they both end up to be the same thing in the end.”

Additional sources for this story: SMI Snowmakers, U.S. Ski and Snowboard, Danfoss, Beijing 2022. Visual reference for snow equipment from
TechnoAlpin and Killington Resort. Downhill maps reference from Beijing 2022 organizers and U.S. Ski and Snowboard.

Ian Livingston contributed to this report.

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