Woodloch’s Blog
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“Winter is Coming”- we’re gonna make it SNOW in our corner of the Poconos!
Oh the weather outside is… weather.
It seems like year over year, we never seem to know exactly what we’re going to be getting from Old Man Winter and Mother Nature. Maybe three feet of snow. Sometimes there’s abundant sunshine and no flakes to be found. It’s all a giant game to them.
But here at Woodloch- USA Today’s “Best Family Resort in America”-we love games. So we’ll play.
What do we do when we don’t get the snow we need from the sky? Answer: WE MAKE IT SNOW! That’s right, since 1991, Woodloch has been manufacturing piles and piles of artificial snow to keep our guests happy all season long. Once temperatures consistently reach 20 degrees and below, we fire up our snow guns and magically transform a blank canvas of grass into a towering mountain of white. Woodloch sculpts their own snow tube runs!
Our famous snowtube run is sculpted every year. The Lakeside run overlooks our beautiful lake and sends riders plummeting down the bank at a top speed of 25 miles per hour before spinning riders safely to the side of the hill. To add to the winter fun, we even build ANOTHER snowscape for our world-famous Winter Olympics!
We get a lot of questions on our snow-making operation so we thought we’d give you the behind-the-scenes scoop on the magic!
- Woodloch has three “snow guns” similar to those found at ski resorts. At peak operation, they transform 60 to 70 gallons of water into snow per minute!
- With ideal conditions, i.e. very low temperatures and humidity, the guns can make more than enough snow to fill four triaxle dump trucks in eight hours!
- Our “Snow Cat,” which resembles a bulldozer and a tank, is used by our staff to craft our tube runs. It is also used throughout the season for one to two hours a day grooming our runs.
- On average, we need about 10 solid nights of snowmaking to have enough powder to manufacture our tube runs. In total, it takes us about two weeks to manufacture and sculpt our tube runs!
- Water for the runs is supplied to us by both Lake Teedyuskung and our private water tower.
- The snow will typically stay with us through the winter season as long as temperatures aren’t unseasonably warm. The last of it is pushed in the lake around the start of April. If it wasn’t, the massive quantities would linger on the beachfront until about May!
Our snowmaking operation is a never-ending effort to keep both of our snow tube runs open for as long as conditions permit! The “Cats” also groom and sculpt our Olympic areas so we can keep the fun going all winter long!
If you haven’t yet visited our resort during the winter months, now is the perfect time to start! In 2018, Woodloch also opened an all-year round outdoor skating rink featuring synthetic ice. Just in case temperatures aren’t as chilly as you might be hoping for, our guests will all be able to go and skate to their heart’s delight on our new rink!
After all… there’s no business like “snow” business!
Filed Under: Winter
