For most of skiing’s history, the season ended when the snow melted. In the Alps, though, resorts have spent decades fighting that. It’s called snow farming: gathering leftover snow into piles, covering them with insulated blankets, and storing them through summer so they can anchor the next season.
The practice started in mid-century Scandinavia, where ski jumps and cross-country courses needed guaranteed early snow. Modern systems use engineered mats — geotextile layers with reflective covers — that hold stored snow near freezing even when air temps top one hundred degrees. European resorts have used them for years to open terrain parks early and cut water and energy use in shoulder seasons.
North America caught on slowly. Snow Secure, a Finnish company, brought its system to the U.S. at Bogus Basin in Idaho after the twenty twenty-four twenty-five season. Colorado had no large-scale adopters until this spring.
That’s when Aspen Snowmass became the first Colorado resort to try it. After the state’s worst snowpack on record and its hottest summer ever, crews consolidated leftover snow at Snowmass’s Makaha Terrain Park and at Buttermilk above the halfpipe — roughly three and a half million gallons, mostly man-made. Surface temps hit one hundred eighteen degrees; underneath, the snow stayed around thirty-four. Drone measurements on August thirty-first showed about eighty-five percent still intact, beating Aspen’s eighty percent target.
The reward came October third and fourth, when Snowmass opened a free rail park on the preserved snow weeks before its November opening. Buttermilk’s pile is still covered, set to become early-season base. Aspen is already buying more blankets for next year.
Chris Miller, Aspen’s senior VP of sustainability, called it part of a climate-resilience toolbox. Research projects ski seasons could shrink by more than half by twenty fifty, so stretching last winter’s snow into next one’s start isn’t a gimmick — it’s infrastructure.
For Colorado, whose outdoor economy depends on winter, it’s a proof of concept: European tools can work in the Rockies, and snow can be managed, not just hoped for.
— Article drafted with assistance from Grok, an AI tool used to organize and synthesize publicly available information.
