Over Thanksgiving weekend, most of the Boise Ridge Mountains were barren. Except one patch of snow where skiers and snowboarders were taking a conveyor lift and gliding downhill into a snow covered terrain park.
Austin Smith is director of innovation at Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area. He points at a roped off area with half-buried snowboard rails.
“We had nine terrain park features and a little turning lane,” said Smith.
It was opened thanks to the Basin’s secret weapon — a pile of snow they stored last year that stayed frozen over the summer.
Nate Shake, the director of snowmaking operations, says the plan was hatched at the end of last season.
“I talked to the snowmakers and I was like, 'just start making snow up there.' We called it project X. We just made a giant pile of snow,” said Shake.
The West is in a snow drought. As global temperatures are rising to record highs each year, mountain areas are delaying openings and limiting ski runs.
Nonprofit Climate Central reports annual snowfall is decreasing across two thirds of the U.S. over the last five decades. That makes it harder to tell when there will be enough snow to open recreation areas.
To make up for the uncertainty, Smith said most destination snow resorts in the West, including Bogus, are relying on snowmaking to start the season. The nonprofit recreation area has been using snowmaking guns since 2018.
But Smith said warm temperatures are making the process difficult.
“Almost the entirety of November, we weren't able to make snow, which is pretty unusual,” he said.
Fewer than a dozen of the nonprofit’s 92 trails opened before January.
So how did the terrain park open with minimal snowfall? For that we have to go to a country where there’s snow up to seven months a year.
Mikko Martikainen is a self-proclaimed “snow specialist” from Finland. In this Wall Street Journal video, Martikainen talks about making and storing snow for the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.
“I've been loving to work with the snow. It's my life - after my wife, it's my second love,” Martikainen said.
The so-called snow whisperer started saving the frozen flakes with a centuries old technique: wood shavings. Next he experimented with rolls of insulation, his ultimate goal to preserve snow over summer and into the next winter.
Martikainen partnered his private company SnowSecure with insulation manufacturer FinnFoam to make snow blankets: polystyrene panels that fold out like an out like an accordion and can cover up to a football field.
Bogus Basin’s Smith explains.
“Those panels are like foam insulated panels, they're vinyl wrap, they have full hinge system in them for deployment. And, uh, they strap together.”
Bogus stumbled upon SnowSecure by chance last April.
“I believe our general manager saw it on Instagram and, you know, bumped our director of operations that, ‘Hey, look at this.’ And he goes, ‘I'll do some digging.’ And he set up a phone call,” said Smith.
SnowSecure CEO Antti Lauslahti answered the call from Finland.
“And we were like, wait, we could actually do this,” said Smith.
So the Basin’s crew dubbed the snow sorcerers began “Project X.” They used machines to create a giant mound of snow, dense enough to cover about 400 feet of the resort area.
Then, Lauslahti flies to Bogus to help the magic happen. In a YouTube video, he stands next to the blanketed pile.
“Our material, when there's no gaps, then there's no air. And when there's no air, it doesn't melt,” said Lauslahti.
The snow mound is about the size of a small aircraft hangar. It stayed frozen under the insulation through the summer, even as the blanket’s surface temperature reached over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
When Bogus uncovered the pile in October, 80% of the snow was still there. When temperatures hit record highs, the storage came in handy.
“We weren't even in a position to start making snow yet on our beginner run. So we pushed the pile down even lower on the coach's corner, flattened it out next to our 300 foot long conveyor lift. And then built a terrain park and used that for our opening weekend,” said Smith.
SnowSecure won’t replace snowmaking. To Lauslahti the blankets are a piece of the puzzle to help resorts open as climate changes.
“It's not like a curiosity. It's like one tool in the toolbox in the future,” said Lauslahti.
And resorts all over the West are looking for solutions.
Utah’s Alta Ski Area is known for its legendary powder and for getting more snowfall than any other mountain resort in the Rockies. Still, it started spraying slopes with artificial snow in 2006.
Alta’s Lexi Dowdall says this year, even snowmaking was difficult.
“Both December and November were so warm that we weren't able to blow snow. So we were totally reliant on Mother Nature's snowfall,” said Dowdall.
Like many recreation areas, Alta and Bogus both do terrain modification: changing the shape of the ski slopes.
“We call it detuning the slope. So making that surface less of a gully and more of like a flat plain that allows us to open that run with less snow,” said Dowdall.
Bogus Basin is the first in the country to work with the Finnish company. On my call with Lauslahti, he told me he’s getting lots of requests from North America.
"During this call, I have had two calls from USA that I didn't answer to like, and, uh, one of them, I can see it's a prospect to now probably say that they will start buying,” said Lauslahti.
SnowSecure’s blankets made TIME magazine’s 2025 Best Invention List last year.
Austin Smith called “Project X” a success and says Bogus is ordering more blankets.
The goal?
“Storing enough snow to open our coach chairlift … top to bottom on stored snow on demand,” said Smith.
That means the nonprofit could open an entire ski trail from top to bottom by Thanksgiving weekend, without any natural snow from the sky.
