Ski Resort LiDAR Mapping
Precision snow management has arrived and California LiDAR's teams play a key role in supporting the operational foundation: Collecting steep and challenging terrain data across rugged mountains with sub-1/10th' accuracy, georeferenced with Ground Control Targets and hundreds of GPS checkpoints to verify along with quality control and point density reports
4 Boyne Ski Resorts:
As the leaves fell, Active Intelligence was tasked with mapping four ski resorts before natural snow interfered with accurate terrain data collection and/or the resorts' mountain ops team started blasting the season's first snow. We went 4/4 capturing Sunday River in Maine, Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, Sugar Bowl in Nevada, and Mt. Rose in California nestled next to world-famous, Lake Tahoe.
Loon Mountain, New Hampshire
Loon has stepped it up and into the future with Kossborher's PistenBully Snow Sat system, unlocking the ability to keep slopes open earlier and longer, know snow-depth in real-time, optimize slope quality, and unify everything from pre-season snow quantity planning, fleet maintenance, customizing groomer routes, to managing water and energy resources
Loon sits in the White Mountains and began with Governor Sherman Adams desire to revitalize the logging economy, opening in 1966 with trails, lifts, and a gondola!
Today's blazing-fast Kancamagus Eight-person lift and incorporating LiDAR laser systems into Loon's PistenBully snowcat fleet is nothing the Governor could have imagined, but he knew creating a mountain for people to enjoy would be timeless
Sunday River, Newry, Maine
Dad and I are business partners captaining this drone venture, and he took me to race in my first snowboard competition at Sunday River. It was a Boardercross event just like Maine's Seth Wescott, who won the first two Olympic Gold Medals for the discipline of flying down the hill against 5 other guys over jumps, mogul bumps and into huge banked turns to be the fastst man standing at the bottom.
25 years later the father-son team is back, this time drone laser mapping at scale. 4,400 convex hull acres across 8 mountain peaks, flown incorporating dozens of 4' x 4'ft Ground Control Targets and taking hundreds of GPS checkpoints across the vast spread. The quality report shows a 0.09' elevation accuracy. Across 4,400 acres. Sub-inch. Not bad. And Sunday River's tracked welding machine, definitely made the carosel on the tail end of fall foliage season
Mt. Rose, Incline Village, Nevada
Drone mapping where the base elevation is a lofty 8,260' ft adds complexity. High winds, constantly being shrouded in clouds, extreme cold, and thin air make the mission extremely dialed-in
Both the lead snow maker and groomer were big fans of the Snow Sat integration into mountain operations. The terrain data leading snowcat pilots safely back home in white-out conditions is my favorite thing I've learned about the value PistenBully's Snow Sat adds.
Sugar Bowl, Donner, California
Love the name, love the mountain, and now kids keep those fingers out of the Sugar Bowl! But, if you or anyone you know has a kid with a destiny in freestyle snowsports, tell them about Sugar Bowl. Their program has a new leader, a gal, all the way from New Zealand, famed for creating world-class freestyle athlete's and the mountain features necessary to do so.
Hence, constructing 3 of the most badass, Olympic-grade, back-to-back-to back earthen jumps so the resort does not have to rely on much man-made snow for the students to be training on the best. Movie producers are also keen to produce some epic videos with the new features we drone laser scanned so Sugar Bowl's PistenBully snowcats can precisely apply all the right amount of snow in all the right places with the Snow Sat system.
We love this case use for drone technology as lifelong skiers and boarders. A dream come true to work in concert with ski resorts and PistenBully, thanks for having us, guys, see you next Fall to add to the collection.
