So I've been absent for here for a while due to my winter job. I'm living away from home and internet up until a couple days ago wasn't attainable. Now I'm all set as far as that goes. I managed to get hired to run a snowcat at a local ski area here in WA for the season. It's been a blast thus far, these things are a riot to operate. Like a dozer, but with a 12 way blade and a tiller behind you spinning away. The tillers have 3 adjustments, depth of cut, speed, and flag/pocket which controls how much snow is held behind the tiller bar before it escapes the mats and leaves the finished product. Most nights we run zero flag, however when things become bulletproof ice we push the flag to collect more snow to cover over the hard snow. Think of it as icing a cake, it's like putting more icing on the knife with the flag cupped, it lays down a thicker layer of processed snow. The controls are fairly simple once you get used to them, but it's very overwhelming at first I will admit. 2 sticks on the left armrest control travel, at least in the cats we run. There's a track speed dial on the left side of the joystick, typically don't mess with it too much unless climbing and don't want to start spinning a track and get stuck. Depending on the setup of the joystick, it could have anywhere from 6-8 buttons. The tiller is controlled entirely from the joystick once you have depth, speed, and flag all set. There's a mini joystick that controls the depth and flag and most of the time, once it's set, you leave it for the rest of the shift. One button on the joystick controls tiller fire, double tap it and the tiller drops to the ground and starts spinning. Another button kills the tiller and lifts to full height once double tapped. That same button controls up pressure or down pressure control, whichever mode you have it set in. The tiller fire button cancels up pressure or down pressure if single tapped while tiller is down. On the front of the joystick, there's a button that puts the tiller in float or 5th wheel position, it will follow the cat around corners on flat ground much like a trailer will. Re-tap the button and it'll center lock. The tiller can also be manually sideshifted left or right and that depends on how the joystick is setup as well, it could either be a button or a small joystick in joystick control. The remaining 2 buttons, when held down and joystick moved, control the wings in and out and the other when joystick is rolled forward or back controls blade pitch and left and right controls angle. The cat's themselves are running Cat diesels with 350 horses, they are burly. Yes, they can get stuck, even though they weigh about 18K pounds. Typically if you're tilling uphill and you're working a lot of fresh snow, they'll get stuck. The key is to feel the loss of traction the instant it happens and avoid digging huge holes that can sometimes be hard to fill. The lighting is pretty good, the 2 new cats we have this year have Xenon lights up front that are beyond belief. Seats are pretty nice, couple of the older cats have air ride seats which aren't the best and they went back to the Recaro seats that were prevelant in the early 2000's. Outside of running the cats, the job isn't quite as easy as it seems. There are patterns to every run we do, we straighline runs just like a guy would do mowing lawns, so I can relate to that having a landscape background. Phew! Well, I figured that there has been a lack of snowcat info on this site as far as I know, I figured I'd throw up the basic ideas. And now the photos.
I'd never have imagined that they have 350 hp!! How far do you generally have to carry snow?
Usually if we have to do a lot of pushing, we'll do it with tillers up, then we'll come back and groom it. Almost all the time, we push snow uphill as it tends to be pushed downhill by skiers. So, if we find a pitch that needs to be pushed or moguls cut, we focus on blading it back up the hill until it looks alright, then we drop tillers and start grooming it. Sometimes the push may only be 100 feet, sometimes we'll push it a couple hundred feet, and occasionally depending on the location we could push it 100 yards or more. Usually if we're running uphill with tiller down, we won't push very much, just robs a lot of tractive power and makes it easier to start spinning, dig a hole, and get buried. Same goes with heading downhill with tillers down, we try not to blade going downhill whatsoever but every once in a while it requires a small acount of blading to level the pass before the tiller rolls it.
nice pics and commentery. i have a buddy who works for another excavator in the area and patrols in the winter. last year they were working a cat road at the top of highlands bowl. it is mostly hike up, anyway he's not having any luck pushin up hill, so he's just trying to get up top, finally makes it and blows the gear pump on this thing. so the cat is a 45 min hike up the hill from the last lift and their packing 5 gallons of hydro at a time to try to get the thing off the hill. no luck , so they get the pisten bully mechanic up from. g.j and the guy shows up in carharts and a service truck. now, they won't let any other equip. up the cat track and their road is blown in so they packed everything up there in backpacks, finally get it going to the tune of $25000. i couldn't believe it. winter work always costs more. congrats on finding a job.
Man that is a sweet machine! How many do they own? More pics please!
Awesome pics, very cool job. How many feet of snow do you have for a base? How many "runs" or hills are there at the ski hill you are on? Thanks again for sharing. Trbo
Wicked job CascadeScraper, my daughter is in the French Alps at the moment as a chalet host, I told her to get me a job on a snowc@t and she said a WHAT ! :Banghead so I explained and she says Oh yer there cool they chase us down the runs there very fast
Sweet info. Me being interested in Heavy Equipment and a avid snowboarder I'm very interested in this. I see that you have a winch cat there. Could you explain when and how they are used? I kinda have an idea but I bet others here would like to hear about that. What resort are you at? How has the winter been going there, I see the news reports of flooding in Washington state so I imagine the cascades are getting pounded? Are those Piston Bulley's or Bombardier? Where is the engine located? Do you have a pipe dragon? Have had the chance to groom in a terrain park? Thats generally where I like to ride I was in Vermont last year and they were building their super pipe for the upcoming competition the following week and they had 5 cats working. They were linking up multiple pushs of slot dozing to carry snow down from above. 1 cat would start up top and slot doz a huge pile maybe 300-400 yds, then turn around, another would pick that up and continue down hill to another cat down on the half pipe location. Very interesting to watch. I've always wondered if they can make snowcats that push as much as they do with the cab at the front of the machine why can't a dozer be made very just like it?
That is awesome. Looks like a great gig and lots of fun. Do you keep warm enough? Did they give you a free season lift ticket? Awesome, man.
I work at Stevens Pass here in WA. Yeah we got hammered with rain below 5,000 feet, we actually lucked out and got 1-3' in places. I actually just got back from a quick day of skiing before I go up to work tonight. I'm not sure how many acres we groom nightly, we still haven't opened up 100% of all the runs we will groom quite yet. Our snowpack is somewhere around 80" right now, we had a little more before the rain hit us. Right now we're grooming about 15 runs on the front side, not counting the terrain park, and a couple more on the backside. Not sure how many acres we actually groom. There are 2 guys on the crew that handle the terrain park, I myself have not gone in there. The winch cat I have not used for winching yet, although I've run it. Basically you hook up the cable to a winch tower or another cat at the top of the run and winch yourself up. When winching to another cat's blade, bury the blade of the anchor cat good and hope she holds. :drinkup The bummer running the winch cat when you don't actually need the winch is that it's 5,000 pounds heavier than the other cats. Tends to get stuck easier, a little more top heavy as well and you can't see out the back windo. When riding out an exposed ridgeline, it can be a puckering experience. You can feel that bad boy pressing the side of the run, if the edge breaks loose and you slide down it would be a serious ride. We have 1 Pisten Bully Edge, it's a good cat when it runs correctly. They just threw a new ECU in it, hopefully it'll be good to fly now. Just wasn't running quite right for a while and they finally were able to get her up and going. We have 2 Bombardier's right now, 1 is the winch which is a BR350, the other is a little BR275. Then we have 3 Prinoth Bisons, and the rest are Camoplast BR350's. Prinoth, Bombardier, and Camoplast are all the same machine. Bombardier was bought out by Camoplast a few years ago, then that went sideways and now Prinoth runs the show. All together we have 9 cats. The Pisten Bully gets used in the park, it has a quick disconnect blade and is plumbed to run the Zaugg pipe cutter. All the cats the engines are below and right behind the cab. The center of gravity is pretty decent, you can sidehill quite a bit. As for staying warm, the heaters work pretty well. Just when you jump out for a pit stop is when it gets cold or if your cat breaks down and you're stuck outside shoveling. We had a pretty good cold spell up there for a while, it was at least -5 one night when we stopped with a 5 MPH wind. 15 below and I jumped out in a t-shirt, bad choice. I made it about 3 minutes and that was all I could handle. And yeah, the free season pass is pretty sweet.
From what I hear, the free season pass is worth some serious hooch. This was from late May, early June of last year. Looked like you could still grab a run on the slopes, but the snow looked pretty slow. Congrats on the job. Have fun with it. Hopefully you can get some work moving dirt next season. Not looking like that good of a year for anyone though.
Last year was a La Nina snow year, we got hammered with snow. I know the skiing was legit, I skipped school a couple times to go. Haha. I like this gig, but I am looking forward to spring nonetheless. Hopefully this season is at the very least not any worse than last year. I talked to my super in November about a month after I was laid off, he said '09 season looked to be about the same, probably not worse. He said I'd be with his crew on an almost identical job in pretty much the same location in April if everything goes well. If not, oh well, there should be a fair amount of state and federal money flying around this year. And if that doesn't work out, my dad has work coming out his ears for landscaping this next season, I'll go do that and maybe get out of the big dirt scene if it's going to get stupid. I've realized that life is just too short to be stressed out about it. So far, I've been able to stay busy pretty much whenever I'm out of work. I definately have ideas of what I'd like to be doing, but if it doesn't happen, fine, I'll go elsewhere. As it stands, I've been fairly disappointed with what I had to go through for 6 weeks of work last season. If things start to look that way this year, hell with it, I'll get through the year and start my own show in '10. Nobody owns me, that much I've damn well decided. In the mean time, I'm pushing snow and skiing for free. :drinkup
I just saw what your doing this winter bud! Nice gig you got going there. Free skiing and a paycheck to boot!!I gave up on skiing as soon as I found out how much more fun snowmobiles are! Here you guys have been hit pretty hard by avalacnes over there. Stay safe and warm!JasonPS--This is much funner than skiing
Hey...whats going on...i just joined this forum but i am currently working at Vail running snowcats...we run both Pisten Bully's and Prinoths.
i love to ski, keep those pics coming please, i love walking out of a bar in some little ski town late at night, looking up on the mountain and see the snow cats grooming. :notworthy:notworthy
I like sledding, just too expensive for me at this point in my life. Some of the new sleds are more than I paid for my car Anyone can do 60 MPH on a sled, I do 60 MPH on skis. :drinkup Haha. I'll probably get me up a sled in a few years, just not quite where I want to be with my finances currently. I'm 22 with a mortgage payment on a piece of land, that's about as much as I want to handle at this point, along with all the other costs of living. I grew up skiing, hard to get away from it and I like working in the ski industry. Taught skiing through high school, was a junior race coach the last year I was there. I have since made the switch to another mountain this year on the grooming crew and have no regrets thus far.
We winched 2 nights ago and opened up a new run. My cat has a ring on the blade to attach to, I guess they didn't want to use the tree that they normally use and we didn't have a tower to winch to either. Operator in the winch made one pass, my cat didn't move, so I hopped in with him. If it wasn't for the winch we would've had a good slide, the snow just peels away as it's pretty heavy after the moisture we got. The guy in the winch built a road to get out to where we were winching, but it went right across a run so we left it pitched downhill to reduce the cut bank on the uphill side. I was nervous as all hell crossing that road, plus the turnaround at the end of the road was a real bear. The guy winching told me before we went across the road that if I screwed it up, it'd be a long ride to the bottom sliding sideways or backwards and if I got lucky I'd go face first and witness the trees at the bottom through the windshield. That right there was what got me nervous. I've seen PB's winch setup and it seems like a much better system. We ran full tension on a couple passes and my cat at the top didn't move an inch. We're sitting on some fairly moisture saturated snow that compacts pretty well, it was a good night to bury a blade and go winching. I haven't slid yet, but it's only a matter of time. We've yet to open a few runs that we free cat and they're sliders I hear, the best is yet to come. How was grooming up there? I need to get up there to go skiing and hit Lake Louise while I'm there. Steep and gnarly!
Dude...cats rule, I'm jealous as hell!!! Have fun!!!
It's fun, it's more or less something to do this winter that helps pay the bills and allows me to ski for free. However, the hours are tough for anyone with a family, I don't have that to contend with currently. There are a couple guys on the crew that have a wife and kids, I can't imagine how tough that is. Only good news is that we work 4, 10's, your sleep schedule is already screwed up, might as well work an extra 2 hours per day and have an extra day off.
Norquay was a pretty small hill and mostly man made snow but most of the runs are fairly steep, so the traction was fairly good until you chewed the snow up to much and then it turned to sugar :naughty then the fun started, trying make the last pass down a run with the cat sliding and not wanting to leave track marks or ridges. The most fun I had there would have been pushing out the man made snow building runs. We would get the snowmakers to blow snow at the top of a pitch and push down hill to cover the run. Nothing quite like a heavy winch cat pushing downhill @ full throttle, with a wall of snow curling as high as the cab in front of you The PB winch functioned a lot smoother then the BR winches. Not trying wrap cable on the drum under tension makes a big difference. The only thing that I didn't like about the PB winch is on off angle pulls it unweights the outside track more. Which is only a problem if your anchor point is not ideal. After working with snowcats your perception of what is steep and scary might change, and the best way to get out of a slide is accelerate downhill.
I was sliding around last night, it was interesting. Hit the sticks and ride it out, that's what I did. Dodge a fenceline at the bottom as well, just barely missed it as I sucked my dumbo ear back in. Since it's warm now because the weather can't make up it's mind if it's spring or winter, the snow is now pretty heavy. It would slab up pretty good and take off in front of you. 2 cats in front of me tossed me a windrow coming down an average slope, but it was all beach ball sized snowballs. I had to eat the pass because the windrow needed to stay in the middle of the run. There I was trying to smash the snowballs with the blade as I went by, trying not to leave snowballs rolling off the finish side of my tiller and keeping the track marks out. I rolled bite out of the tiller trying to process the windrow, but I didn't want to go too much or I'd get track marks. We should've pushed everything before we tilled it instead of trying to do it all in 1 pass, but oh well. I did push 1 pitch before we tilled and it made a big difference, much cleaner. Most slopes were fine to do in 1 pass but there were couple that were tougher to do than others given the snow conditions. See we got all this snow, now the snow level is supposed to go to 12,000 feet for the next week. Base elevation of the hill is at 4,000 and it climbes to just under 6,000 feet. Thie next week is going to be terrible. Just don't understand 40+ degree weather in January at 4,000 feet, I just don't get it especially when 3 weeks ago we were getting -5 which isn't terribly typical and Seattle was seeing lows in the teens. Strange, strange year for weather.
Good luck with the warm weather nothing like dealing with mashed taters all night long.
Jeffksf, They call that snow "farming". They blow snow for a month straight and let it leach the water out. Then they farm or push it down the hill in slots. it takes another month to farm and shape the super pipe. I have a couple of good friends who run the groomers, it's quite a process.
Well the season is practically over, it went by entirely too fast. Had lots of fun and picked up the grooming thing pretty well. After 6 weeks, I was told to take the lead on the runs I normally groom, so I took it as an opportunity to prove myself. I was also sent to go do runs that typically the senior guys on the crew normally do, feel somewhat accomplished with the gig as a whole. We've been seing some unseasonably warm weather the last few days. Last week we got absolutely hammered with snow, we had 12 feet of snow fall in March alone and that kept up until last Thursday. The last 3 days have been in the mid 50's at the base area. I was snow farming last night to get my bottom ramps levelled back up after all of them sank 6 inches during the day. Tally for the year shows that I didn't once put my cat into the trees. There were quite a few slick nights in the last month with all that new snow that I wondered what would happen if I did cut loose on a couple different long, steep pitches we groom. At first, sliding is scary because you can get going pretty quick. Then you learn a couple tricks to seat yourself back down on the snow and maintain course. It's tricky, I still don't have it all the way figured out, but hopefully next year I can get it mastered. Haven't learned winching yet, maybe next year. Had the chance to groom in our terrain park a few times although I wasn't doing any building. It's a whole new world in there and it'll push you to run your cat to the best of its abilities. I ran our Pisten Bully Edge a few times for the fun of it, not a bad cat but ours is a lemon. Doesn't have any power and is super, super twitchy on the sticks. Pisten Bully has been up a handful of times and tells our terrain park operator, which is where the cat is supposed to be working, that it's supposed to run like that. Needless to say, it's a dog if you're doing a lot of pushing, but we've found it to be a decent freegrooming cat minus the stick twitch. We're trading it out next year for a new Prinoth Bison X or Pisten Bully 400, I don't think the boss has made a decision yet.
something to add to the resume,sound's like a good experience for you with more knowledge to look forward to next season congrats.
Thanks! That's the way I look at things. Given the chance to try something new, I do it. As it turns out, I liked it more than I thought I would and will give it another run next season.
Howdy CascadeScaper and thanks for the pics and stories. I used to groom up at Alyeska back in the 80's, they started me out on an old Tucker quad track without a blade pulling a culvert! We finally got a DMC 3700 and then we would freefall all the steeps (winch cats are for p***ies) knock the air out the first passes and let it set up and try it again by hanging on to the berms for dear life. The compacter bars were rudders and you steered with the blade and just made sure the tracks kept spinning . Once I spun a complete 360 off the glacier bowl while freefalling the landing hill for the gelande jump. It was so steep and so deep I was blinded by the snow coming over the cab and lost fall line and with total vertigo I just picked everything up and when I could finally see and realized I was going backwards I tilted my blade to spin me downhill again and came out the bottom like it was no problem, the people watching didn't even know we had spun . . all they saw was a cloud of snow!:drinkup Brian Burnett (former US Ski Team service tech) was my passenger . . .
Dude that's sick! A guy I worked with this year groomed at Alyeska years ago, I think he said 15 years ago but I'm not totally sure. You're right, the tillers are definately rudders, tiller steering is a must on those slick nights. I try to keep the blade off the snow as much as possible on steep stuff, although sometimes blade steering is necessary but I've found tiller steering pretty effective when descending. I've also found that if you get panicked and start dragging blade you lift the cat off the snow just enough to pull some track out of the snow, thus reducing the amount of grousers touching the snow which are effectively holding you to the pitch. That's just been my observation, although every night is different and some nights you can get away with a little blading, some nights you can't. I haven't completely spun around, but I know the possibility is there. I've almost gone completely sideways though, that'll wake you up if you were thinking you may fall asleep at some point during the shift. :drinkup The biggest issue I've seen with getting tons of new snow is not being able to hit it and let it set up. Not helping this situation is the fact that we were on hardcore budget this season and only ran 7 cats every night. In the past, we used to have 2 cats do the backside at 4PM on a swing, then 9 would do the frontside on a grave, providing 110 cat hours on the hill each night. This year, we ran only 70 cat hours per night. Needless to say on the nights we had new snow and things are slick, we were strapped to get done in time. Knocking the air out and letting a run sit for a couple hours to set up then hitting it again just wasn't in the cards most nights. This was zero fun because it just stresses a guy out to leave it perfect if you can't even give it a chance to set up.
It does seem kinda sick now that I think about it! Yes, the blade steering can be tricky and only a subtle touch here and there is all you get. I found that in the steep, deep powder the tracks didn't hold you much but if they stopped spinning you dug a huge groove and built up snow in front. One of the things about grooming is that it really helped me with finish dozer work. Don't you think it has helped you to be able to shape better in dirt? In grooming your always carrying a grade across a plane . . . I miss seeing massive moguls in front and beautiful groomed behind . . . Enjoy. :usa
You know, I'm not sure how grooming will help me out running a dozer. I don't think it could hurt me, but I've yet to get back in the dirt since the end of the grooming season. I've been told by a few people that it will help me when running a finish dozer, which is good because that's an area I'd really like to pursue. Had a little experience running a 6R doing finish work, but just a few days before last winter. I suppose maybe the grooming experience will allow me to hold my own on a dozer when I get another chance, I only have about 80-90 hours on a dozer and that's on everything from a 3 to an 8.
i drive a 1984 Pisten Bully 200 D with a 18x8 foot drag sled heres the link: http://www.snhtrailblazers.com/snhtrailblazers/Groomer.html