The SAM (Ski Area Management) website/magazine is something interesting that I stumbled upon for the first time this summer. It calls itself a professional trade publication for the mountain resort market. The primary focus of the SAM site is on US ski area issues, but here's a short article from a few weeks ago on Russia's successful bid to host a Winter Olympics at Sochi in 2014: http://www.saminfo.com/news/article.php?tid=1654

More from another source on Vladimir Putin's support for the skiing in this fascinating region little known to Westerners: http://www.smh.com.au/news/russia/russia...2338690072.html

SAM provides a excellent inside look at the industry. I am a big fan.

I used to subscribe to the magazine but that was about $80 a year. I check the web site for all update in the business.

The 100% automated snowmaking article is pretty interesting:
http://www.saminfo.com/issues/article.php?tid=3579

Does anybody still get the hard copy? I haven't read it regularly for awhile.

100% automation, hmmm, this sounds like a job for that technology killing mob, the United Snow Workers Union Local #1997. They say they'll sell out the deadwood in exchange for good health care, eye and dental insurance.

..and a defined benefit 30 year pension with a $500 dollar monthly kicker until social security starts.

That sounds about right. Working in seasonal employment, bitter cold, long hours, dangerous equipment, they should demand a decent work place with decent wages and benefits.

thanks for sharing that wintergreen article

Thanks also for link to that terrific article by Robin Smith. His quote: "On Martin Luther King weekend of 2005, I visited the area on Saturday afternoon in a pouring rainstorm. Snow cover was very good, but fully saturated with water. The forecast was for the rain to stop and the temperature to quickly drop into the low 20's overnight and stay there for 24 hours. I really wanted to be somewhere else.

But that evening, as the temperatures dropped below 30 at 7 p.m., 120 guns fired up. The first of only two snowmakers showed up at 10:30 p.m. The next morning at 9 a.m., Ashton, Jay Roberts, mountain ops VP, and I headed out. Almost everywhere we went on the area's 130 acres, we were sliding on fresh machine made, about 4 to 8 inches at maximum. Groomers had been out on every trail, but only on the side of the trail opposite the guns. Otherwise, we were skiing the snow as it had come from the guns, Wintergreen's new "gold standard:" not machine-groomed corduroy, but 4 inches of machine made powder."

This miraculous recovery experience mirrored the one I had in Feb of 2006: http://www.dcski.com/articles/view_article.php?article_id=887&mode=headlines

Most impressive is the idea that the gold standard now in snowmaking is not just nice corduroy, but "4 inches of machine made powder" or in words from my article: "dry loose snow on many trails... I'm not sure it was even groomed"