From artificial clouds to autonomous snow-grooming vehicles, here are 12 ways for ski areas to weather warmer temperatures and less snow.
5 min
Downhill skiing could become an increasingly exotic proposition in a warming world. By midcentury, the U.S. could see 90 fewer days below freezing each year, according to a 2016 study published in the Journal of Climate and based on data from the federally funded North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program. Nearly all ski areas in the U.S. are projected to have at least a 50% shorter season by 2050, according to a 2017 study funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and published in the Global Environmental Change journal.
Higher temperatures make snow more elusive on the slopes, cutting into revenues for ski areas. Low snow years between 1999 and 2010 already cost ski areas an estimated $1 billion in revenue, according to a 2012 analysis commissioned by the nonprofits Protect Our Winters and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Today, ski areas run snow guns 24/7 as soon as cold weather hits and send GPS-guided snowcat vehicles to the slopes to distribute snowpack. Snow-making technologies are making rapid advances and could alleviate some of the burden of weather volatility. Winter skiing could also be less of a focus as resorts become year-round destinations and offer more activities. Climate change presents ski areas with an opportunity to reduce their own carbon footprint by switching to cleaner energy sources.
From autonomous snowcats to solar-powered properties, take a look at what ski resorts might look like in the coming years.
Modifying clouds to boost mountain snowpack, or cloud seeding, has been done over Colorado’s ski areas for decades, but was scientifically proven effective only last year. It involves using generators to spray silver iodide into a frigid cloud to turn water droplets into snow, and it can increase snowfalls by up to 15%, says Neil Brackin, the CEO of Colorado-based Advanced Radar Co., a firm that sells weather radar systems. Tomorrow’s generators may be more accurate and deliver more advanced seeding materials into the sky, Mr Brackin says. Cloud-seeding programs could cost ski areas $100,000 to $1 million annually, he says.
Neuschnee GmbH, an Austrian startup, has invested more than $2.2 million to develop a balloon-shaped chamber that artificially recreates a snow-making cloud. Ice particles injected into a wooden-framed structure propped on steel rods and wrapped in nylon membranes bind to water droplets to make up to 1,000 cubic feet of snowflakes a day, enough to fill a midsize truck. Founder Michael Bacher says ski resorts could use the technology to give runs a natural feel and imagines a future where operators deploy fleets of autonomous artificial clouds. The company is looking for new partnerships to continue development.
Developing downhill mountain biking as a seasonal complement to winter sports could let the industry maximize the summer season and diversify revenue streams, says Rob McSkimming, a mountain resort development consultant at Select Contracts, a Canada-based tourism consulting firm. Ski areas could invest more in lift infrastructure like bike carriers and repurpose snow making systems into irrigation systems that water biking trails. “Good dirt is like good snow,” Mr McSkimming says.
Mr Snow, a German startup, sells a carpetlike faux ski hill that rolls out like a mat and has an arrangement of loops on the surface that reproduces gliding sensations, says Jens Reindl, one of the company’s founders. Mr Reindl says the product is beginner-friendly and could become popular in low-altitude ski resorts near urban centres. The mat, which is available for sale in the U.S., comes in modular 65-by-6.5-foot patches and costs $120 for every 10 square feet.
In the future, it may take skiers more twists and turns to reach the bottom of the slope as ski operators seek to have more people use the same patches of snow, says Joe Hession, the majority owner of Mountain Creek Resort in New Jersey. Moving snow blocks to create more jumps, rails, gradual hills and big turns could allow resorts to focus their snow-making capacity on selected segments and do more with less terrain, he says.
Today, snowcat operators drive vehicles equipped with sensors, GPS receivers and tablets to visualize snow depth and distribute fresh snowpack. Mr. Hession sees a day when driverless snowcats wirelessly feed terrain data to automated snow guns that pump out snow on shallow spots more accurately. The ski industry might need to hire more highly skilled and higher paid employees to manage these remote systems, he says.
Temperature increases mean ski resorts will have shrinking windows of cold weather to produce artificial snow, says Brian Fairbank, chairman of the Fairbank Group, which operates three ski resorts in the Northeastern U.S. More efficient, cheaper snow guns that pump out more snow could help make up for this change. One recent innovation is the “Sledgehammer,” a $3,150 snow gun developed by Fairbank that it says converts twice as much water into snow per hour as traditional machines and performs better at higher temperatures for about half the price.
Ski resorts could increasingly turn to green infrastructure like solar panels and wind turbines with the goal to operate 100% on renewable power and diminish their own carbon footprints. Wolf Creek Ski Area in Colorado purchases most of its electricity from green sources year-round, including a 25-acre off-site solar farm. Mountain Creek Resort relies on goats to mow the grass on the slopes in the summer rather than use fuel-intensive machinery. More operators are expected to adopt renewable energy in the future, says Adrienne Saia Isaac, the director of marketing and communications at the National Ski Areas Association, an industry group. “We as an industry can’t simply rely on pivoting to summer business as a climate change solution,” she says.
The Italian startup Nevexn has developed Snow4Ever Thermal, a container-size chiller that freezes water to make up to 1,700 cubic feet of snow a day, almost enough to cover a tennis court with a foot of snow, at above-freezing temperatures. The machine uses solar thermal energy and energy from burning biomass such as wood pellets. The company developed the system with a $2.1 million grant from the European Union and tested it in the Italian Dolomites last year, says Francesco Besana, a co-founder. It plans to commercialize it in the coming years.
Ziplines, climbing walls, water attractions and mountain roller coasters could be increasingly offered year-round as resorts endeavour to be less reliant on winter sports. This shift could come with a new focus on immersive educational experiences like night walks and light shows that introduce visitors to a mountain’s geological history, says Mr McSkimming of Select Contracts.
Indoor ski areas could make up for seasonal variations and provide access to new markets in urban areas, says Dr Natalie Ooi, the director of tourism enterprise programs at Colorado State University. Big Snow American Dream, the country’s first indoor ski area, opened in New Jersey in 2019 and could provide a blueprint for future investments. It boasts a 4-acre skiable area that operates at minus two degrees celsius and has a 48-metre vertical drop, four lifts and snow guns.
Customers could get much better deals by pre-buying season passes to access more resorts, including internationally, as the industry moves to insulate revenues from weather variations, says David Perry, an executive vice president at Alterra Mountain Co., the ski-resort giant. He anticipates passes will represent 60-70% of Alterra’s ticket sales in the coming years, up from 40-50% today. Resorts could also start selling megapasses valid both in summer and winter, says Auden Schendler, a senior vice president in charge of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co.
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As AI productivity trackers reshape workplace evaluations, employees are learning how to manage calendars, activity levels and AI usage to ensure their contributions are recognized.
4 min
What’s more important than being a good employee right now? Looking like a good employee in the eyes of AI productivity trackers that more managers are using to evaluate their teams.
Employee-monitoring systems are especially popular at tech companies and are also used by other white-collar firms that want to probe how people spend company time. The scary thing: You might not even know you’re being watched because many states don’t require disclosure.
Metrics can include performance data that is undoubtedly relevant, such as sales results. But it also can employ dubious proxies like keyboard strokes and how often your computer screen goes into sleep mode.
We generally accepted, or at least understood, heightened surveillance during the work-from-home era. Back then it seemed reasonable for bosses to keep tabs on employees they couldn’t see.
Yet the oversight has only escalated, and tensions are rising, too.
A group of former Meta Platforms employees alleges in a lawsuit that the company used a “constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” when it began laying off about 10% of its workforce in May. Meta says humans make termination calls.
However that case shakes out, a couple of things are clear. Companies eager to gauge which employees are locked in now have sophisticated AI monitoring systems at their disposal. And they believe they have leverage in a tepid labor market.
So while we may chafe at having our worth reduced to numbers on the boss’s productivity dashboard, we have to play the game as it’s being played. Here are some tips, based on conversations with people who make employee monitoring systems—and others who game the systems.
Calendar integration is one way that productivity trackers have gotten more advanced and, ostensibly, fairer.
Let’s say you make an old-fashioned phone call or attend an in-person meeting. Your Outlook or Slack status may switch to “away,” making you appear as inactive as if you were taking an extended coffee break.
Employee monitors like one made by a company called Insightful cross-check your online status with your calendar to see whether there is a valid reason for your apparent inactivity. If that call or meeting is on your schedule, then the system will recognize that you are busy offline. If nothing is on the books, it could look like you’re slacking off.
Let’s not go any further without addressing the underlying question: How much downtime is permissible during the workday? After all, people have been scared to let managers see anything non-work-related on their screens since personal computers first arrived in offices.
No one knows this better than Roger Wagner, who is widely credited with creating the first “boss button” in the early 1980s. He designed a keyboard shortcut to instantly display a spreadsheet if the boss walked by your cubicle while you were playing a computer game. Boss buttons have been features of countless diversions since. (I confess to using one built into a March Madness streaming app.)
Wagner, the founder of computer-education company 1010 Technologies, says his original design was a joke—more of a commentary on overbearing managers than a cover for lazy employees. Good bosses understand workers need mental breaks throughout the day, he says.
This matches what I heard from Insightful Chief Executive Ivan Petrovic. He says customers that use his company’s workforce-management platform don’t expect employees to stay on task 100% of the time.
“On average companies are aiming for 60% to 80% of your time being utilized for work during the day,” he says.
Go ahead and exhale. It’s probably OK to watch an occasional YouTube video at your desk.
And if you’re going to artificially inflate your activity level, be careful. Hitting 90% could look suspicious.
So don’t leave your mouse jiggler on all day. Choose the right one if you must resort to shenanigans.
There are lots of software applications that mimic the movements of a computer mouse, so you can appear to be working while away from your desk. There are also devices that plug into computer ports and do the same thing.
Corporate cybersecurity systems increasingly block these apps and devices, and productivity trackers claim to be able to detect them. But some workers swear by mouse docks, like one made by Tech8 USA, that keep cursors moving. The company originally made mouse-moving software but now focuses on physical jigglers.
“People are drawn to mechanical solutions because they’re so simple and don’t require software,” says Tech8 Marketing Director Sam Matthews. “As monitoring technology becomes more sophisticated, that distinction has become even more relevant.”
Another popular metric for employee-monitoring systems is AI usage. Companies want to know who is embracing new tools, and it can be tempting to think more is better.
“There’s a performative aspect where employees overblow their usage of AI so that they appear relevant in the organization,” says Andrea Derler, principal researcher at Visier, which helps companies track and analyze employee work habits.
In a recent Visier survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, 48% admitted to exaggerating their AI usage.
This is already an outdated strategy. Using AI for everything used to score points for experimentation. Now it can seem wasteful because many companies are watching AI token spending more carefully.
Look, productivity theater has always been part of work. Most of us aren’t trying to cheat the system, but expectations are changing so quickly that we need to be savvy about what the latest employee trackers are looking for.
Sometimes it takes a little gamesmanship to get full credit for our contributions.
