PLUM, Pa. — New snow guns at Boyce Park ski area have piled 6-foot-high mounds of snow.
Armed with the guns, Jim Shultz, whose Ligonier-based company, Mountain Works, took over snow-making duties this year, aims to give skiers, snowboarders and snow tubers the longest season and earliest opening day in at least a decade at the Allegheny County-owned ski area.
"Everything else is still Pittsburgh. It's brown and dingy," Shultz said of the area around the ski area. "Then you come around the corner, and it's like, 'Wow! Look at that. It's white. It's pure and beautiful.' "
The Boyce Park ski area expects to open on Friday, which would be more than an month earlier than last season's Jan. 19 opening. The county hopes to keep the ski area open through February, doubling the duration of a typical season.
County Manager William McKain said contracting Shultz, who has nearly 40 years in the snow-making business at Hidden Valley and running the SnoZone tubing hill in Bethel Park, will reduce costs and reverse a history of short seasons and equipment failures. The county typically loses $400,000 to $600,000 a year to operate Boyce Park. McKain expects that to drop to about $250,000.
"And we're hopeful it's even better than that," McKain said.
The ski area, part of the 1,096-acre park spanning Plum and Monroeville, is the latest component of the county's parks to contract with a private company in an effort to decrease costs and increase efficiency. The county partnered with Adventure Forest LLC to open a zipline course in
April at North Park, and OTB Bicycle Cafe to open a restaurant at that park's signature boathouse in October.
Outdated snow-making equipment and elevations about half the 2,000- to 3,000-foot levels at larger resorts in the Laurel Highlands shortened ski seasons at Boyce Park to typically little more than two months. Boyce Park's top elevation is 1,365 feet.
Frequent failures of its lone chair lift plagued the ski area during the 2010-2011 season. A warm winter shortened the 2011-2012 season to less than a month.
But this year's projected opening date will put the season's schedule on par with Seven Springs, Hidden Valley and ski areas across Pennsylvania that opened Friday.
"It's a great place for beginners to learn how to play," Andrew Baechle, director of the county's parks, said of Boyce Park.
The contract puts Mountain Works, incorporated this year, in charge of snow-making, grooming and maintenance during the winter and off-season until 2016. The county will pay $702,000 a year for maintenance, grooming and snow-making and pay $288,000 for repairs and upgrades through summer of 2015, according to the contract. Mountain Works was the only company to bid for the contract, McKain said.
To prepare for the season, Shultz arranged the rental of 11 Techno Alpine snow machines, the equipment he used at Hidden Valley, which was acquired by neighboring Seven Springs in September. The machines, described as "NASA-like" by McKain, can make snow even when temperatures are above freezing if the humidity is right, Shultz said. Even when temperatures reach 36 degrees, Shultz can make snow if the humidity is below 40 percent.
Each machine has a weather station and adjusts its snow-making as conditions change. The machines joined Boyce Park's arsenal of existing snow guns.
"We're doing battle with the weather," Shultz said.
This article was written by Channel 11's news exchange partners at TribLIVE.