Ski areas with night skiing are coming out of the shadows with new trail lighting installations that illuminate the snow better than ever, and use way less energy than older technology. Less energy means a lower power bill from the utility company. Plus, utility companies are incentivizing ski areas to make lighting upgrades by footing a lot of the installation bill. In all, current trail lighting technology is a pretty bright idea.

Ever since Webb Moffett first pointed some old gas station floodlights on the slopes at Snoqualmie Pass near Seattle as World War II wound down, operators have been searching for the best way to light their trails safely and efficiently for skiing after sunset. Over the years, ski areas have installed a wide variety of trail lighting—metal halide, hydrogen, low- and high-pressure sodium, and the now-banned mercury vapor lamps.

While most did an adequate job of throwing light, they also were hot-running energy hogs. Two newer systems overcome that drawback: LED and Snow-Bright.

Overall Overhaul at Wachusett

Jeff Crowley, president of Wachusett Mountain, says the cost of illuminating the Princeton, Mass., ski area’s trails with more than 500 metal halide lights contributed $100,000 to the resort’s energy bill in 2016.

After converting from 1,000-watt metal-halide fixtures to 400-watt LED lights from LuxTronic in the summer of 2017, Crowley says Wachusett’s energy costs are expected to drop by about 75 percent. “Our objective was to come out with a better ski experience, an increased number of lumens, and reduced power consumption,” says Crowley. “We’re really happy with our installation.”

Better still, the half-million-dollar investment in the new LED system was substantially offset by $300,000 in conservation rebates from local power company National Grid. “National Grid is doing everything it can to reduce its power load rather than having to build new power plants,” notes Crowley. “This was not only a good business decision, but better for the environment, and our customers respect and appreciate that.”

Greater energy efficiency is achieved not just by swapping high-wattage bulbs for lower ones, but also in the ability to digitally adjust the output of the LEDs. For example, when skiers are on Wachusett’s slopes, the bulbs operate at 200 watts, but that’s dialed down to 100 watts when the snowmaking crew is on the mountain after hours. “It’s a hard enough job for snowmakers at 2 a.m., so now we can light up the slopes while they are out making snow,” says Crowley.

The “smart” LuxTronic fixtures communicate with each other and can be lit or dimmed via wireless controller. “We used to have to run around at sunset and turn our lights on in tiers,” remembers Crowley. “Now, the system knows astronomically what time sunset is, so it is programmed to turn on a half-hour beforehand.”

Perhaps most importantly, Crowley says the LEDs produce a “whiter, brighter, more consistent light” for night skiing, with a spread pattern that has helped eliminate potentially dangerous dark spots. Unlike the metal-halide lights they replaced, the LEDs will not dim as they age.

Snow-Bright

The principle of magnetic induction lighting that underlies the Snow Bright system isn’t new: in fact, it was invented by Nikola Tesla, understudy and later rival to Thomas Edison, in 1891. Also known as electrodeless lamps, they share many of the positive attributes of LEDs, including energy efficiency, long life (up to 100,000 hours), instant on-and-off, and minimal dimming with age.

In fact, part of the reason that the Edison filament bulb was adopted as the standard for lighting was that the Tesla bulbs rarely needed replacement, making them less profitable than Edison’s short-lived incandescent bulbs.

“There’s no filament, so there’s no physical way to limit the life of the bulb,” says Phil Gotthelf, an avid skier and managing director of Ultra-Tech Lighting, the manufacturer of Snow-Bright, which has recently been installed at Mt. Peter in Warwick, N.Y., Steamboat, Colo., and Snowy Range and Snow King Resort, Wyo., among others.

One of the key features of magnetic induction lights is the ability to tune the wavelength of light to work optimally in various environments: Ultra-Tech, for example, also niche-markets the lights for use on golf courses, in school gyms, and as street lighting, for example.

Snow-Bright is tuned so the light penetrates the surface of snow, refracting the light rather than reflecting it. As Gotthelf explains, this effectively turns the snow itself into a light source, amplifying the work of the fixtures and allowing them to cast less light from the towers and consume less electricity.

“The lights work with the reflective properties of all snow types, from powder to sludge,” says Gotthelf.

To the eyes of Karl Kullberg, manager of Mt. Peter, the Snow-Bright lights he’s been systematically installing on his slopes over the last four years are also less “blinding” than LEDs.

“At night, with no snow on the ground, they don’t even look like they are lit, but once you have snow it’s crystal clear,” says Kullberg. “You see every nook and cranny.”

Snow-Bright casts light that closely approximates daylight, which is especially important on slopes used for racing, says Roger Perricone, former race director at Steamboat. Perricone has overseen installation of the lights on Steamboat’s race hill and a pair of beginner trails near the base area.

“In race conditions, visibility is critical. In full spectrum light, red gates look red and the blue gates look blue,” he says. “With the ability of these lights to refract, the light comes back up from the snow so you can see the rolling terrain. Kids, to the dismay of the ski patrol, are able to go pretty darn fast.”

By shifting racing practice from daytime to evening, ski areas can keep more terrain open when the slopes are fullest. “It’s actually safer to ski at night because you don’t have the sun changing the angle of light, and you don’t get that afternoon sludge effect,” says Gotthelf. “At night, the light is always consistent, with no clouds to flatten the light out.”

Mt. Peter, which has had night skiing for more than half a century, previously lit its trails with a mix of sodium and metal halide fixtures. “We were constantly changing bulbs with the old system,” remembers Kullberg, who says that in four years of using Snow-Bright, not a single fixture has failed. “Once these are up, you’re pretty good to go,” he says.

Replacing all of Mt. Peter’s trail lights with Snow-Bright represents an $8,000 to $10,000 investment, so Kullberg has been changing bulbs out in stages. “We started with 10 bulbs on the race hill, and the following year did another 10,” he says. “There are still a few old lights on the hill, so hopefully by next year we will be at 100 percent.”

As at Wachusett, Mt. Peter also was able to pocket a substantial credit from the local utility company for its investment in more energy-efficient lighting.

Snow-Bright also has been certified by the International Dark-Sky Association for producing minimal glare and reducing light trespass and skyglow, which makes the fixtures especially appealing to ski areas located on public lands. But there are advantages for those located on the edges of ski towns, too.

“Our neighbors like that fact that there’s not the super bombardment of light you get with a football field,” says Perricone. Gotthelf adds: “From a half-mile away, Steamboat fades into oblivion.”

Night lighting options are just full of bright ideas, it seems.