Wintergreen migrated from a 100 percent manual snowmaking system in 2001 to a 100 percent automatic system in 2005. The financial gains of partial automation are often masked by the labor and energy costs of the remaining manual system. Wintergreen, though, reveals a much clearer picture.

In 2001, Wintergreen CEO Bob Ashton heard the promises of automation, including its capabilities in marginal temperatures, and during intermittent hours of snowmaking opportunity, for rapid recovery and for providing consistent snow quality. Total automation also promised dramatically reduced labor and energy costs. Ashton felt that Wintergreen could be the "poster child" for automation. York Snow offered a system analysis and proposal.

From the 2001 analysis:

"The existing snowmaking system at Wintergreen Resort uses a mixed bag of first-generation compressed air and water guns and some more modern low-E guns. Many of the older snow guns have A/W ratios of 20:1 or greater at the marginal temperatures Wintergreen often struggles with. . . . they are extremely expensive to operate by modern standards. They require constant manual adjustment to keep them on their performance curve, which is always a losing battle . . . The starting and initial optimization . . . can take several hours. Shut down can take another hour. Smaller windows of "cold time" are missed or underutilized. The low-energy guns . . . are simply not effective at very marginal temperatures. Wintergreen's current system . . . costs too much to run for the performance it delivers."

Predictably, York recommended full trail automation, claiming:

• Wintergreen could open 75 percent of its terrain before Christmas-something that was completely unprecedented.

• Wintergreen could resurface 75 percent of its terrain overnight.

• Snowmaking staff could shrink from 8 to 10 per shift to 2 per shift.

• The snowmobile fleet could drop from 4 to 2.

• The system could go from off to full optimized capacity in 7 minutes. (Previously, it took 2.5 hours.)

• The pumping system would max out at 4,200 gpm at 24 wet bulb vs. 8 degrees for the old system.

• The automatic system would cut the annual cost from $475,000 to $260,000-a 45 percent decrease.

The First Steps

Ashton fully embraced the dream. Among the rank and file, though, skepticism was abundant. They envisioned "Nightmare on Elm Street." First off, no French computer could ever replace the hard work and skill of eight descendants of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. "You can't make snow without snowmobiles." No computer could ever figure out the swirling winds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The geeks the area would have to hire to run and fix the computer wouldn't fit in here. The list went on.

Nonetheless, in summer 2001 Wintergreen installed a 10-gun automatic system in a new tubing park. The demonstration caught everyone's attention. The snow volume and quality created in 12 hours by guns constantly on the curve, compared to any 10 guns constantly waiting to be adjusted, was obvious. Plus, when the tubing lanes went from thaw to freeze, a nightly occurrence, the park manager could simply shut down, radio to have 10 minutes of snow made in the deceleration zone, and then reopen the park.

Jumping In

The next year, Wintergreen installed 120 automated tower guns, covering one-third of its terrain. The resort went with an air/water system because it already had the infrastructure. (The low-hanging fruit is to increase the utilization of that existing asset. Most resorts with older gun technology would find the same thing.)

Again, automation was an operational success. The high quality snow surfaces and the ability to recover were rewarded by the marketplace-including Wintergreen's large, vocal homeowner group.

But automation exposed some interdepartmental issues. At Wintergreen, "compressor operations" functioned separately and independently from the on-hill snowmakers. Compressor ops guys take tremendous pride in running their plant at maximum capacity. Discharge pressures are always on the money. Snowmakers just want to open another trail, and coming up three guns short of bridging to a lift just doesn't cut it. If adding those three guns drags a compressor off the curve, so what? This was not exactly the Hatfields and McCoys, but it wasn't one big happy family, either.

The computer that controlled 40 percent of the guns was in the compressor plant, and this shifted the balance of power. Staffing changed radically, too. A year later, on hill staff went from 12 per shift to two. The golf course manager, with no previous snowmaking experience, was promoted to snowmaking and surfaces manager. Scott Gunnell, unencumbered by "manual thinking," proved to be an excellent choice.

Wintergreen saw the future and, in 2004, completed the conversion to 100 percent automation on every acre of the resort, an addition of some 240 guns, a year ahead of schedule.

Skiing Is Believing

On Martin Luther King weekend of 2005, I visited the area on Saturday afternoon in a pouring rainstorm. Snow cover was very good, but fully saturated with water. The forecast was for the rain to stop and the temperature to quickly drop into the low 20's overnight and stay there for 24 hours. I really wanted to be somewhere else.

But that evening, as the temperatures dropped below 30 at 7 p.m., 120 guns fired up. The first of only two snowmakers showed up at 10:30 p.m. The next morning at 9 a.m., Ashton, Jay Roberts, mountain ops VP, and I headed out. Almost everywhere we went on the area's 130 acres, we were sliding on fresh machine made, about 4 to 8 inches at maximum. Groomers had been out on every trail, but only on the side of the trail opposite the guns. Otherwise, we were skiing the snow as it had come from the guns, Wintergreen's new "gold standard:" not machine-groomed corduroy, but 4 inches of machine made powder. Every other gun was running on every other trail. Then, 45 minutes later, the guns would alternate. The process went on across the mountain.

For 2005-06, Wintergreen added new expert terrain, and it got automated snowmaking. Plant size remained the same; efficiency gains made expansion unnecessary. Each season, a few automatic tower guns have been relocated to accommodate the truly unpredictable winds on the spine of the Blue Ridge. Otherwise, the system just hums.

By the Numbers

How did Wintergreen's system perform against York's original claims?

• 75 percent of trails open by Christmas? Wintergreen achieved 100 percent in 2005-06; the trying winter of 2006-07 was another story. Wintergreen's homeowners and customers have raised their expectations.

• Overnight resurfacing? It's done often, though Virginia weather doesn't always permit it.

• Staff reductions? Wintergreen has an on-slope crew of just 2 people per 12-hour shift. The few superstars are still there, but now with full-time, year round jobs with benefits and, with no slackers to carry, a much-improved quality of work life. The compressor-room staff of one (and sometimes two) operates both the plant and the central computer that controls all the guns. Labor costs have dropped about 70 percent, from $168,000 to $54,000. Worker's comp has dropped also.

• Snowmobile fleet cut from 4 to 2? Yep. And they were not used heavily.

• On in 7 minutes? Actually, startup time is about half that. Wintergreen proves it often, during its intermittent windows of snowmaking and, when it must completely interrupt the snowmaking load at the request of the power company. In manual days, it took more than an hour head start to shut down and 2 1/2 hours to come back up to full optimization. Now the system can run full blast to within 10 minutes of interrupt. Then, within 10 minutes of "all clear," they have 10 megs of snowmaking back on line and producing.

• Max out their 4300 gpm at 24 degrees? Yes, it's possible, but the area doesn't always go for volume. Let's look at why.

Show me the Money

What about the 45 percent decrease in overall operating expense? Didn't happen. What they show is $464,765 in 2001-02 and $549,746 in 2005-06, an 18 percent increase in four years.

But that's because Wintergreen opted for quality and quantity. In 2001-02, Wintergreen pumped 100 million gallons in roughly 1,000 hours. In 2005-06, the area pumped 200 million gallons in roughly the same time-a 100 percent increase in production from exactly the same pump and compressor plant. Automation increased pumping utilization from 39 percent to 65 percent. Wintergreen lowered its cost to make an acre-foot of snow by 41 percent. And it produced a higher quality snow.

Grooming costs went down, too. The new generation of big cats may have lowered the cost of distributing fixed tower gun snow.

The bottom line is, if electric rates, gallons of water and snow quality had remained at the 2001 level, Wintergreen would have met the goal for cost savings.

Did better snow translate to profits? Skier visits and revenues have risen in tandem with automation, with the gains attributed to trail count and snow quality. Wintergreen's new-found snowmaking muscle has given it a competitive advantage in the market. The resort has added 20 days to its average season, running for the first time into April. Improved snow quality has not only increased ticket and pass sales, but has had an effect on real estate as well. Re-sales are very strong, and the resort is developing a new plan to increase the bed base.

For Wintergreen, 100 percent air/water automation was certainly the right choice. Is this the best solution for all areas? Of course not. Although automation may be the common denominator, other variables-the type of snowgun technology, the mix of technologies, the percentage of trails and which trails are automated-vary with each resort. What is generally true is that the greatest snowmaking need creates the highest return.

Nonetheless, Bob Ashton was right. Wintergreen is the poster child.

Robin R. Smith, formerly a resort owner, worked with Intrawest and York Snow. He left the company in 2005 to start his own consulting company, SnowConsult, based in Denver, Colo.