Here's some pics of my job this winter in Vail, Colorado. The nice shiny new Prinoth in the pics is a BR500 demo. 24ft wide and 500 HP of muscle.
Some more!
Here's a few scenic pics of the town and sunsets captured while in my cat.
Here's a pic of our haul cats we use for our on mountain restaurant to haul people, a pic of all our cats lined up to do last tracks, and a few pics of one of our Pisten Bully 600's
Another pic of the inside of the 600, The inside of my Prinoth, A pic of the new Ritz-Carlton going up across from our shop, and my cat in the shop being worked on.
Nice pics. When I was running cat Prinoth had big power at 350hp when we demoed it how times have changed.
Here's the park rats cutting their pipe and a few other randoms while grooming.
Yeah now BR350's are 350HP, I love em....They will push massive blade fulls of snow with the engine not missing a note.
First pic is the inside of a Pisten Bully 300. Story of broken windshield in the fourth pic: Mourning crew operator fell asleep, slammed into a huge tree and bashed his head into the windshield due to not wearing his seat belt, They said they were gonna take him to the hospital and drug test him and he refused and quit.
The PB 300 winch cat in the shop and another PB 300 on the rack. Also a pic of our newest Prinoth winch cat sitting in the shop yard.
One last pic of my cat and the fuel site in the afternoon and at night fueling.
Vail Cat Crew: Well!!...... (picture Jack Benny)... lol All I can say is... there should be a law against some body having a job like that... at least, without me having first choice... :tong Amazing job and pictures DuraMaxMan66... :thumbsup God... I wish I had that shop... :crying OCR...
It was a VERY fun job I have to say and encourage anyone with the time to chase one of these jobs to do so. They are a blast to operate and the job never gets old.
The 600s are pretty awesome machines, some day cats will groom mountains by themself. Did you guys have problems with all of the sensors on them. Also, why does Vail run PB and Prinoth?
they did not have that when I was up at Penn tech
Vail is a great place! I have many friends in the ski shops and ski school. I worked there for a short time 3 years ago.
I couldnt tell ya man, i ran a prinoth most of the time except for when my cat was down since 300's were all we had left over. We only had 2 600's, They were bought at the begin of last season and they are supervisor/SR. Operator cats. We only had 5 300's that were free groom cats and the 1 PB winch cat in my pics and the coach cat. As far as why we have both prinoth and PB it comes down to who wants to sell us the most cats for the least amount of money. At the begin of this year we had 7 new Prinoth 350's, 1 new winch cat, 1 new Bison X for the park, 1 regular Bison, and 4 regular 350s I Think next year they are getting rid of a few 300's and a few old 350's and buying 2 new 400's and 2 or 3 new Prinoth Bison center cabs? PB's suck for the grooming we have to do with them so I think they are trying to fade them out.
Did not have what?
those snow dozers things.
Can you tell us what the boom on Cat #1206 does?
Steve, I'm gonna guess that that gives the winch height and mobility to work around the blades on those machines and the winch cats are for grades too steep to work with one machine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMCIvWjwnOY This vid is not mine, but it shows how the winch cat works... It allows the machine to turn around, and stay hooked up to its anchor point. edit: This vid is pretty good too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz_e1SIJ3Tg
Thanks guys. I never realized how sophisticated that operation was!
Just gotta wonder, how many THOUSANDS of feet of cable are on that drum.
It really depends, some are setup differently. Our winch cat has 1,500 feet of cable I believe. Great pics, wish I would have had more time this last season to get some photos of our operation. With the budget issues, we ran 1 less cat than normal, so most nights I was strapped just to get my runs done in time. Little different operation than Vail, you guys have a wad of cats! We have 9 all together and run 7 every night. We had 2 new Bisons this year and next season it sounds like we'll be replacing our PB Edge with a 400 that's setup as a ParkBully. Possibility we'll get a new version of the Bison as well, the guys that demo'd the new center drive really liked it. It's awesome to see that the BR500 really does exist, we keep hearing about it out here but have never seen one. Our runs aren't wide enough to justify that beast, most of our runs are only 7-10 passes wide. I like the Bisons, they'll definately out push a 350. I also like the track tension adjust buttons under the console, definately a nice feature. Looks like you got a 350 with the Recaro seat, definately nice! All of our 350's have the crappy air ride seats, I hate them. Can't feel the cat very well and they are just garbage. I prefer the 350 blades over the Bison blades unless it's completley bulletproof. Plus, the 350's sound so much better than the Bisons, that's the best part! Grooming is wild, it's interesting to see how it's done at other resorts. You guys do a lot of fleet grooming down there at Vail? We're such a small operation in comparison it's rare that we had more than 2 cats grooming together.
Awesome pics! Thanks for posting. What I wouldn't gie to be in that 1/2 pipe for a day.
Here is a pretty interesting video from Solden Austria, its a winter play on a glacier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7tYP-LMdKg
Great Pics! Brings back memories of my years in Crested Butte! Actually everything from those years is a little fuzzy. Wow, a driver quitting over a whizz quiz? What, he couldn't find the one guy with clean pee? Got any stories about ski patrol stepping over the winch cat cable? "Track tension buttons"? Not fair! I had to pump them up with grease! and I busted out a front tooth doing it! Nice cabin Cats I ran BR400's with fiberglass cabins at Irwin Lodge. Yup, you don't know adrenaline 'til you are running through foot deep snow with an extinguisher to put out a cabin engulfed in flames. I could go all day with snowcat stories,rumors and lies. Hard to believe I once ate, slept and bled on those beasts. I'd still be doing it if I could handle poverty with a view, and I wanted to kill my liver. I'll dig up some pics
Yeah Cascade, We have 30 some snowcats at Vail....but that includes all the coach cats we have and winch cats. We had 6 winch cats and 1 was for the super pipe with the pipe zaugg. Yeah the BR500 was a fenominal machine, the power was so smooth. But it was a little big and it couldnt get to some parts of the resort due to width on cat walks. And as far as fleet grooming, We almost always did it on night crew due to having to get so much done. We would divide up into pods and there would be 4-6 cats to a pack and usually 2 or 3 packs but there was a few guys that were off on there own doing dozing projects or grooming base areas. Mourning crew solo groomed until about 7am then they have to start packing due to people on the mtn. I wish we did more solo grooming, it really showed you what your work looked like all together instead of 4 other passes too. But I totally agree about 350s/Bisons. I love the way my cat sounded....they are a bit loud but very wicked
Haha it didnt matter anyway...there was only about a week left in the season, so Vail got the $1,800 bill for the new windshild and he got off scott clean,....well except for being black listed with Vail. And haha no ski patrol didnt do anything too stupid....just pulling there snowmobiles out of ditches and holes for them a few times.
Crappy pictures of pictures Here is the work cat in the shop, a view with a cabin cat, and a MATTRAX in it's natural habitat. Damn, Irwin Lodge was in such a beautiful place I wish I had taken more photos. Cats truly are amazing machines, I always thought of them as high performance heavy equipment. Very light weight and agile.
Solo grooming is the best! I loved the nights I could go out by myself. Not that I'm not a team player, but it's easier to pick up mistakes when you're by yourself. I could do my ramps better by myself, not get in a big hurry just because I'd have to keep another cat busy while I was doing ramps. Just a less stressful situation unless I got hammered on with a bunch of snow, then that changed things. On clean nights with not much new snow, the chances for windrows were low and 2 cats could knock out everything in my section of the hill with few mistakes. Those nights were good too, but I almost prefer to be strapped to get done every night, keeps me from falling asleep.
Here are 2 videos of Vail Grooming Day time crew that I found that were filmed this year by people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdoz34EM4uA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLm1VoheDt8 And heres 2 videos from last year that my friend made on night crew in a Pisten Bully 300. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys0pi1vmZEw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Hv6rC1KW4
I've been done for a month now and watching those videos makes me miss my cat! Ready for next season already. :drinkup
Me too! Only thing is I wont make it out to Vail next winter and there is no resort in the northeast that compares to grooming at Vail.
That's a bummer. Well, running a cat is running a cat. Some places are better than others, but if you need to fuel the addiction, go wherever you can to do so :drinkup. Found out a couple days ago that we had another demo PB 400 come up after the season ended. Rage Productions and Teton Gravity Research were doing some filming at the area I work at a copule weeks ago, we had 3-4 cat operators build some serious kickers for the film crews and maintain them as the shoots progressed. I guess the boss wanted to demo the 400 again, but this one was set up as a ParkBully whereas the 400 we tried earlier in the season was a straight up freegrooming 400. Pretty sure we'll be getting at least one 400 and I don't know what they'll buy to replace the other cat we're getting rid of, I know we're replacing two cats. Maybe another Bison, maybe a Bison centerdrive, who knows, maybe a 400 set up as a freegroomer.
Nice photo spread there in the mountains of colorado duramaxman! Most people do not realize the amount of heavy iron it takes to keep the slopes open !! Thanks.