Salon.com > Smilla’s Sense of Snow http://www.salon.com Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:25:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Snowmaking is the most dangerous part of skiing http://www.salon.com/2013/02/23/snowmaking_is_the_most_dangerous_part_of_skiing_partne/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/23/snowmaking_is_the_most_dangerous_part_of_skiing_partne/#comments Sat, 23 Feb 2013 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13207716 DECEMBER a couple years ago, I am on the back of a snowmobile. The gas fumes are overpowering, and the two-stroke engine too loud to hear anything over. I race up a hill with 30 feet of hoses trailing behind me. These are not some small rubber garden hoses but the size of ones firefighters use. I’m clutching onto someone named Nolan, who’s steering. Dusk is settling; the hill is steep, and I worry we’ll tip over as he rounds a bend. Nolan has a first name but doesn’t use it. He’s thirty with rust-colored hair hidden under a hood and balaclava. He wears insulated everything: Carhartts, gloves and blown-out snowboarding boots patched together with duct tape. He’s head of snowmaking at a small ski hill in the Catskills near where I live, and until this afternoon I have no idea what it takes to make snow, the very work involved.

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