Whiteface Mountain makes plans for snowmaking reservoir

CEO Ashley Walden spearheads multi-year effort to combat snow shortages

By James M. Odato

Leaders of the Olympic Regional Development Authority want to build a reservoir at Whiteface Mountain, a major undertaking and potential solution to snowmaking challenges.

Chief Executive Officer Ashley Walden said in an interview that she’s assigned staff to define the scope of a plan that would be a multi-year project to create the bulk storage water facility for water pumped from the Ausable River.

The first step, she said, would be retaining a consultant for a study for cost and location options on the Wilmington mountain.

The reservoir expense would follow recent investments in snowmaking facilites and equipment and a new set of improvements expected to cost $2 million dollars the next two years. The upcoming work concerns a pumphouse, grates and conveyors that take water from the Ausable but get clogged, damaged or degraded because or slush and debris.

Changing weather patterns, Walden said, and greater temperature swings have contributed to variable water quality for snowmaking and the pumphouse fixes are seen as short-term mitigation.

“We are looking at some sort of reservoir, which will solve the problem,” she said.

The idea of a Whiteface Mountain reservoir has been on the blackboard for decades, but put off as alternative, and less expensive, measures were attempted to meet demands for water for snowmaking. 

Walden turns to the storage strategy as complaints about snow conditions, grooming, trail closures, safety and injury have come to her desk and as she attempts to bring more competitions to the Olympic facilities ORDA runs for the state.

The most recent documents required by the state Department of Environmental Conservation for land under its jurisdiction, called unit management plans, listed a snowmaking reservoir as a “conceptual” project for Whiteface.

By putting off the reservoir project, the amount of tree-cutting in the Adirondack Forest Preserve property under the amended unit management plan was greatly reduced, according to the 2004 plan.

Instead of a large investment in a reservoir, ORDA purchased more efficient snowmaking equipment and a system that could pump as much as 6,000 gallons of Ausable water per minute when at top performance.

Whiteface Mountain reservoir project: A long time coming

In amendments to the unit management plan in more recent years, the reservoir idea called for it to be built near the pumphouse close to the West Branch of the Ausable.

It would hold 10 million gallons of water. But the idea was shelved again.

In 2022, the amended plan noted that increased snowmaking capacity approved in the past “is currently being implemented with good results” and, like before, the reservoir idea was put aside.

A unit management plan item for a Whiteface reservoir in 2018 called for it to be built over 4.1 acres and have storage capacity of 22.6 million gallons. Justification for it included that at peak snowmaking times, river flows or mechanical problems may keep Whiteface from withdrawing water fast enough to meet demand. 

The possibility of constructing a snowmaking reservoir at Whiteface was considered as early as the 1996 management plan. The 2004 update identified a conceptual area located uphill from Boreen Loop on the alpine facility and that a reservoir with a storage of up to eight million gallons was desired. Construction of this reservoir would have required the construction of a dam. 

Walden said details are years away and that an entirely new unit management plan, not an amendment to the running plan, would be likely. Permits would also need to be sought and such a process is accompanied by public hearings and comment periods.

Whiteface is the only downhill facility managed by the ORDA lacking a reservoir, Walden said, and, as a result, Belleayre, in the Catskills, and Gore, near North Creek, enjoy consistent water supply.

She did not speculate on the need for any blasting but said the goal would be to minimize impact from any project.

Photo at top: The trails of Whiteface Mountain in February 2024. Photo by Lincoln Riddle