Chosen by the Vancouver Olympic Committee for the 2010 Olympic games, Cypress Mountain needed the ability to produce between a half meter and a meter of snow during a 50 to 100 hour time frame. SMI® was hired as a key partner in this 40 percent expansion, including:
Chosen by the Vancouver Olympic Committee as the official freestyle skiing
and snowboarding venue for the 2010 Olympic games, Cypress Mountain needed to
secure the ability to produce between a half meter and a meter of snow during
a 50 to 100 hour time frame. SMI® was hired as a key partner in the engineering
and construction phases of this 40 percent expansion.
The unique challenge of the project resulted from the resort’s high elevation
and location near the Pacific Ocean, exposing it to extreme precipitation conditions
ranging from horrific rainfalls to very cold conditions with no precipitation
at all.
This required designing and building the surface water intake to accommodate
huge flow swings, with the reservoir sized accordingly. A variable speed, constantly
adjusting fill pumping station was installed with automatically controlled flow
based on water availability to maintain minimum stream flow rates.
Cypress now boasts a turnkey, state-of-the-art, fully automatic and high-density
snowmaking solution using both carriage and tower mounted Super PoleCats, with
the capability of blanketing the slopes with one meter of snow in two days of
cold conditions.