Contrary to the fantastical notion that the classic ’60s surf movie might want you to buy into, summer is not endless (at least for ski areas). At some point in the fall, any ski area with an active summer program needs to prepare for the imminent arrival of winter. And since more and more areas feature more and more robust slates of summer activities, the summer-to-winter transition has become more demanding and complex.

The number of possible summer activities that a ski area can now choose from is long and getting longer. Alpine slides, alpine coasters, ziplines, bungy jumps, disc golf, canopy tours, trampolines, miniature golf, water parks, Segway tours, simply lounging in shaded comfort at base-area plazas—the summer scene at ski areas is dramatically different than it was just a decade ago. And each of these activities, of course, has its unique operational and maintenance demands, one of which inevitably is winterization, whatever that might entail.

Choose Summer Ops Wisely
For some areas, winterization starts with the choice of summer activities and rides in the first place. One guiding principle used by Mont St. Sauveur in Québec, with a highly active and successful summer program, is to select activities for which winterization is minimal.

“We try to choose activities that require as little moving (and disassembly) as possible,” says Mont St. Sauveur president and COO Louis Dufour. That not only minimizes the winterization process, says Dufour, it also minimizes the inevitable risk of damage to parts and materials that comes with breaking things down and moving them around and into storage.

That, of course, implies leaving much of the summer infrastructure in place. To reduce the possibility of interference with winter activities, Mount Sunapee, N.H., has carefully sited most of its summer activities to avoid overlap with skiing terrain. “We tried to build our Adventure Park as much by a choice of activities as by where we placed them,” says Mount Sunapee’s director of marketing Bruce McCloy. “Most of it stays in place, and we designed it that way.” The area’s eight ziplines and its aerial challenge course, for example, are sited in the woods, between trails, so that, as McCloy puts it, “you would never know that we had a summer program” when skiing in the winter.

Mount Sunapee’s only summer activity situated on skiing terrain at the base area is a miniature golf course. And once the course’s features (e.g., lights, scoring tables, miniature lighthouses) are removed, snowmakers submerge what’s left—holes with winter-resistant artificial turf and gravel walkways—under an ample supply of snow.

Indeed, simply covering summer-activity infrastructure with snow is a typical winterization tactic. But not all activities are as easily covered as a de-featured miniature golf course.

Protective Snow Blankets?
Included in Breckenridge’s Summer Fun Park are three, 2,600-foot alpine slides that would be exorbitantly expensive to remove and store for the winter. The solution is simply roping off the slides for winter, along with winter reinforcement of a few areas to protect against the weight of snow and frost heaves. Of course, roping off a few acres of open terrain is a luxury that a large resort like Breckenridge, with close to 2,500 skiable acres, can afford.

Breckenridge, like Sunapee, simply covers its miniature golf course with snow. But to assure that the course is protected from potential damage inflicted by snowcats—especially in spring, as snow coverage dwindles—wood covering is also applied. Powerful snow-moving machinery can apply a world of hurt to snow-covered summer infrastructure, says Breckenridge’s senior activities manager Dan Edwards, and protection from grooming and snow-moving activities is a primary concern in the resort’s winterization plan.

Deconstruct and Organize
Of course, deconstruction, removal, and storage of some summer infrastructure is unavoidable. That might involve not just activities components but also general summer features. At Breckenridge, for example, that means shade structures, small bridges, signage, walkways, and “little stuff we add mostly for embellishment,” says Edwards. It is essential, he says, that all of those items are numbered and labeled before storage to facilitate spring reassembly.

Most areas schedule the closure of summer operations for mid- to late October, although at a place like Breckenridge, where a September snowfall is not unlikely, closing day could arrive as early as a week or so after Labor Day. The complete winterization process should be fairly expedient, taking a few days or, at most, a couple of weeks, depending on the size of an area’s summer program. (According to Edwards, Breckenridge rewards top employees, who might otherwise be furloughed during the shoulder season, with winterization jobs to provide an income source at a time when layoffs in a ski-resort community are widespread.)

As a practical matter, not all activities can or should be shut down at the same time. Although most summer activities at Mont Saint-Sauveur stay open until the end of October, the area shuts down its popular water park in September, to avoid any chance of damage due to below-freezing temperatures. That means draining the water supply, shutting all valves, and checking all motors to be sure they have not been subjected to excessive wear and tear during the summer.

Park features are later buried in snow, although in some places, filler materials (e.g., barrels) might be put into slide tracks to minimize the amount of snow needed for full coverage.

A Time to Repair
With activities deactivated in the fall, there is an obvious opportunity for maintenance checks and safety inspections. Dufour says that the maintenance crew performs as many routine check-ups as possible during the fall breakdown “so we’re not under pressure in the spring and there is no backlog.”

At Sunapee, the infrastructure for many activities requires relatively little maintenance to survive the winter and be ready for summer, but McCloy notes that even activities designed to withstand the harshness of winter weather usually require some maintenance and tweaking. For example, magnetic auto-braking systems on the ziplines are removed and recalibrated at the end of the season.

Sometimes, winterization produces unanticipated maintenance needs. Breckenridge, for example, offers Segway tours as part of its summer program. But Edwards and his crew discovered only after purchasing the Segways that the batteries needed to be kept charged throughout the winter when the machines are stored away. That was a requirement, Edwards admits, that they missed “in the fine print,” and a remote battery charger became “a last-second purchase.”

Endless Summer (Ops)
There is, of course, an option to winterization: Don’t shut down summer activities at all and keep them running year-round. Big Sky, Mont., for example, has a very full roster of summer activities. But those activities—ziplines, giant swing, climbing wall, ropes course, and others—were selected and designed “to be used on a year-round basis,” says GM Taylor Middleton. “We don’t mothball anything for winter. We want to have activities that offer alternatives to skiing and snowboarding. We consciously selected things that would provide an ROI on a two-season basis.”

Dufour concurs: “That’s something every area is looking for, installations that can be open on a 12-month basis.” Obviously that isn’t possible with an outdoor waterpark, but the area’s zipline and mountain coaster, for example, remain open throughout the winter.

Perhaps there is some endlessness to summer, after all.