2010 Olympics Venue
Cypress Mt, Vancouver, BC
Objectives and Solutions
Chosen by the Vancouver Olympic Committee for the 2010 Olympic games, Cypress Mountain needed the ability to produce between a half meter and a meter of snow during a 50 to 100-hour time frame. SMI was hired as a key partner in this 40 percent expansion.
The unique challenge of the project resulted from the resort’s high elevation and location near the Pacific Ocean, exposing it to extreme precipitation conditions ranging from horrific rainfalls to very cold conditions with no precipitation at all.
This required designing and building the surface water intake to accommodate huge flow swings, with the reservoir sized accordingly. A variable speed, constantly adjusting fill pumping station was installed with automatically controlled flow based on water availability to maintain minimum stream flow rates.
Cypress now boasts a turnkey, state-of-the-art, fully automatic, and high-density snowmaking solution using both carriage and tower-mounted Super PoleCats, with the capability of blanketing the slopes with one meter of snow in two days of cold conditions.
Pumping
- Newly Added Creek transfer pump station transfers 500 gpm (1,892 lpm)
- Main pumping station has four 400 HP (300 kW) pumps and delivers 3,000 gpm (11,356 lpm)
automation
- Fully Automated SmartSnow 5.0 controls pump stations, snow machines, and aspirated weather devices.
snowmaking
- Snowmaking capacity of 3 feet (0.9 meters) in two days of cold conditions
- Nine New Trails Added
