A long wall in the executive offices of the mountain company at Alpe d’Huez, France, is hung with two series of framed pictures of the resort’s almost-bare slopes, taken in December 1987 and March 1993. Photos from the 2006-07 season, when above-normal early-season temperatures in the Alps hampered snowmaking efforts, could easily have joined them. But instead, the slopes where white. While many European resorts were still limping along, Alpe d’Huez reported most of its terrain was open—thanks in large part to SnowSat.

Today, Alpe d’Huez is better prepared to cope with low snowfall and warm temperatures than most resorts. It is the test site for SnowSat, an integrated system that employs a high level of technology to take the guesswork out of grooming, and soon will do so to control snowmaking as well. Designed in nearby Grenoble, SnowSat combines computer hardware and software, a GPS system, sonar technology, and tried-and-true grooming and snowmaking equipment to wrest the best ski conditions out of the most marginal of winters.

Thierry Girard, Alpe d’Huez’s grooming operations manager (chef de damage, in French parlance), credits what he calls the most technically advanced system in the ski industry for the area’s success. His boss, Georges-Charles Faraudo, who heads mountain operations, believes that the technology will make the difference in his resort’s ability to attract business in upcoming years, too.

SnowSat’s capabilities are the stuff of operations people’s dreams: computer links between the resort’s Kässbohrer grooming vehicles and York snowmaking will fine-tune snow cover to maximize both natural snowfall and machine-made cover. Tested and tweaked over several years, specific functions are being phased in as they are refined. These include real-time monitoring of snow grooming and snowmaking operations at the mountain operations office; real-time tracking of each snowcat’s activity by the cat driver himself; the ability to analyze grooming and snowmaking efficiency at any time with the click of a mouse; even personnel training and supervision.


Monitoring Snowcats
Last season, nine vehicles out of the resort’s 37-groomer fleet were outfitted with the SnowSat system; eventually, all may be. From the outset, the system has been able to pinpoint precisely where on the massive resort’s 220 kilometers (130 miles) of slopes each snowcat is working. This data is fed back to the mountain operations office. The screen in the mountain operations office shows each individual cat by location in a different color, enabling the supervisor to monitor efficiency in real time or at any past date. 3D graphics show operations in each sector of the skiable terrain.

Alpe d’Huez’s goal is to groom 80 percent of its slopes each night. The supervisor can monitor how it’s going at any time and also generate a complete grooming report at any time with the click of a mouse. He can see broad swaths of terrain or zoom in on a tight parcel.

In addition to the big picture that mountain operations tracks, each driver can take responsibility for his own work. Each SnowSat-equipped cat has sonar that measures the snow depth under the moving vehicle, so the driver can fine-tune his grooming as he goes along. His own monitor shows him where he needs to push snow to cover thin spots before they become bare spots. This makes each cat as effective as possible.

Four teams of two SnowSat-equipped cats groom Alpine slopes, and one operates solo on the resort’s 50 kilometers of cross-country trails. While grooming on the far-flung slopes is usually accomplished in teams, GPS monitoring carries a safety bonus. If a cat or two is not moving when it or they should be, the shift supervisor can radio or send someone out to check on the drivers and their vehicles. For safety as well as efficiency, groomers that winch off fixed anchor points are always on the SnowSat system, which is even sensitive enough to show the cable on-screen.


Fine-Tuning Snowmaking Operations
Faraudo foresees even greater capabilities. The same sonar system that enables each driver to “see” the snowpack beneath the cat will ultimately feed that same information back to the computers that control individual snow guns. As a snowcat passes over a part of the slope, it will continuously feed information on the cover in each gun’s range. If cover is thin, that gun will automatically be put into operation. If it is adequate, the gun will remain idle. The system will make snow only where and when it is needed, with minimal water and energy usage.

One priority is to install snowmaking on the entire six-mile La Sarenne run. Accessed from the resort by a series of three cable cars, this signature run is skiable only about 50 days a year, even though it starts on a glacier—albeit a rapidly shrinking one that has lost more than 55 feet in depth in a decade. Faraudo’s goal, thanks to SnowSat, is about 100 days. “Tour operators don’t want to sell [packages to] a resort that can’t guarantee snow,” he says.

By 2010, he plans to equip a full 50 percent of the slopes with snowmaking, up from the 30 percent currently in place. This will require a total of 800 snow guns—and they will be individually controlled. There is a sense of urgency, he acknowledges, because in his part of France, “water rules are getting tighter” and rainfall has been diminishing—and so in 2006-07 was snowfall.


Personnel Monitoring and Training
Fifty-five drivers are on the list to be assigned to grooming teams, with a beginning driver teamed with a veteran. Since individual drivers’ performance can be extrapolated from the grooming reports, SnowSat is also used as a personnel management tool. The all-hands roster contains each man’s shift assignment (two night shifts and one day shift) and days off. The roster is the basis for the assembly of teams for each shift and assigns each driver to a specific cat. Drivers are assigned to teams for terrain parks, slopes and winching. Quickly-produced printouts of the nightly team list go to team managers. A color designated for each team makes on-screen monitoring easy for supervisors. When each shift is finished, SnowSat generates a grooming report.

From the outset, the idea behind the development of SnowSat has been to provide the best conditions as efficiently as possible. “The concept is to optimize the production of snow and upgrade grooming,” Girard says. Though resort officials decline to quote the price of investment in this cutting-edge technology, it is clearly significant. Still, because it is the testing ground for SnowSat, Alpe d’Huez got a good deal. “It cost less because it is in development,” Girard says, but, he points out, “We started with a white page.”

More and more of that page is being colored in all the time.